A Dying Product Manager
Recently I was visiting with a product manager. He was the only product manager at his company, and was a very nice person with a lot of capability and knowledge that he wanted to see his company capitalize on.
I was heart-broken. Even when I think about it now it makes my gut churn a little. He wanted so badly to help his company see the value in, and role of product management, but the company had never had a product manager, and didn’t know what he could really accomplish. He had all the responsibility, for all products, but no authority. He didn’t have any other people on his team to help him, and he had no way to get development or marketing to assist him. They looked at him only as a guy who new what all the features in the product are, and was a good source of answers to questions no one else knew. He looked so overwhelmed and drained. I thought and thought about how we could help him as we were there. I couldn’t sleep at night. For the first time in a long time my steak didn’t taste good. One step at a time we helped him develop a plan so that he could get people in his company to rally around him and push the product management role into a central position where he could ensure product success.
I walked away remembering how excited and relieved he was that he finally had a way to bring his role out of the Lose-Lose situation it was in, help his company to embrace product management, and transfer some authority to balance that responsibility. If there is anything I would hope to say to anyone who is in a similar position in the group, it’s that you are not alone. There are a lot of product managers that fight each day, tooth and nail, to get their company to embrace simple things such as a central repository for enhancement request, staying on scope with a release, giving accurate and timely cost estimates, or market and budget forecasting. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and one day you will be in a company that has fully embraced all of product management’s best practices, and is running on all cylinders. It may even be where you are at now.
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Comments (5)
My friend's company use product management/ marketing to fold pamphlets and mail out flyers, she finally end up to be sales
What would you recommend the steps to take if anyone should be in this situation and the company and the management level wasn't really listening?
Posted by no name | March 16, 2008 9:21 PM
Hopefully the community will agree with me when I say that if they have you folding pamphlets and mailing out flyers - you should probably update your resume and start looking!:(
On the chance that you might get an audience with the people making the decisions, I'd say focusing on the core of what Product Management is all about; we help build the right things at the right time, to both help customers have a more intimate relationship with us, and to help prioritize and validate our direction against opportunities for revenue and growth.
Long story short, we are the ones who make sure development is building the things that will give us the biggest bang for our buck!
Posted by Peter Ganza | March 17, 2008 12:27 PM
In our company we have 35 product managers. Its seen as a very progressive role in the company either as a significant role itself or as a stepping stone to senior positions in the. The trick is to avoid being the 'product specialist' - make sure you get other areas to take responsibility for the operational aspects of the product and focus on the strategic part of the roadmap - that is to get your business to invest correctly in future developments
Posted by Kevin Relihan | March 18, 2008 1:02 PM
I've not worked in places where project managers and product managers had authority. That's the way it is in matrix organizations. What they have is influence. You did what they said, not because they had power, but because they had influence.
The lack of authority is not a reflection of his company's lack of belief in product managers. Products are never born under product management. Product managers are not hired until sometime after version 1.0 ships.
What this individual doesn't realize is that the way he does his job and his successes or failures will determine how subsequent product managers in his company will fare. If he needs to change the mind of the organization, get some help from marketing for an internal marketing campaign, but don't go demanding authority.
He would get the influence he needs by being "THE CHANNEL," being the decider, being the insulation between demands and volatitility, being with the know what and know who. If his services are invaluable to the functional staff, his influence will grow.
The product managers I don't want to for with or for are the ones that want to do it all themselves, the ones that can't spec exactly what they want, the ones that expect perfection rather than interation towards perfection, the ones that can't go what they say in the timeframe they set. They get by on authority. But, they never have influence. They never lead, or we don't follow. It's time to leave the company when they arrive.
Posted by David Locke | May 2, 2008 2:25 AM
Our product manager is amazing. he gives us business analysts who have relationships with real stakeholders and end users right on our team. This allows us to stay close with our base and deliver the right functionality. Now if only IT would give us an architecture that could support delivering the value faster!
regards,
James
Posted by James Peckham | June 5, 2008 12:39 PM