Feature picker or product leader?

The role of a product manager can vary significantly from one organization to another, and it's influenced by factors such as company culture, industry, and specific product development methodologies.

Many years ago, I had a boss who said to me, 'Greg, product management is where we put our failed engineers or failed salespeople we still like'. And for many years, that was true, unfortunately, in many companies. Or they were our domain experts. They 'knew the space'.

But the role changed in technology like it had in many other industries. My friend and product management expert Jim Berardone, in his book '10 Steps to Implementing B2B Product Management', put forward three types or what he calls tiers of product managers and their associated ‘decision rights':

Tier 1 – Release Optimization

Here, the product manager’s primary decisions concern release priorities

What new features should be in the next product release? What capabilities are most important to your customers? To your business? Which are the least important? If one feature ends up taking more engineering time than expected, should you postpone introducing another feature? Delay the product release? Cut-back on the feature’s intended capability? Or change how the feature is created? These types of decisions typically involve making tradeoffs between short-term and long-term goals. That’s what product managers are expected to decide. In the Tier 1 model, product managers make these decisions release by release, ensuring the release satisfies market requirements. (see Product Owner below for more)

Tier 2 – Resource and Roadmap Optimization

Tier 2, product managers have, in addition to their Tier 1 responsibilities, significantly broader decision-rights. They decide how much engineering resource capacity to invest in different buckets of product work including new products, market-driven product enhancements, customer-specific opportunities, sustaining development, product infrastructure, and quick repairs/hot fixes, etc.

Tier 2 product managers also decide on the strategic product roadmap as it relates to the company’s business goals, as well as to market opportunities. They decide the sequence and timing of new product capabilities which apply across multiple releases, and when the product should address new types of users, new product applications, new market segments, and new technologies – all of which need to be captured in the strategic roadmap. They actively prioritize and re-balance investment in development across these buckets while managing that roadmap. Tier 2 requires product managers to anticipate the future needs of their customers, to understand those needs in depth, and to recognize the implications of external developments on the product’s marketplace. (Look up Portfolio Manager in Project Management for more)

Tier 3 – Business Optimization

Here, in addition to making the decisions enumerated in Tiers 1 and 2, product managers decide how to optimize the business and market performance of a product or an entire product line. This is sometimes referred to as “Strong-Form Product Management” or “Heavyweight Product Management.” That’s because the product manager is responsible for the financial and market outcomes of the product as well as for its long-term value to the business. Unlike product managers operating in Tier 1 and Tier 2, Tier 3 managers have cross-functional decision-rights. They’re required to make, and then to align, difficult cross-functional tradeoffs involving the full range of product-related business decisions. Among them: marketing strategy, target segments, pricing, distribution, services, development, suppliers, partnerships, competitive positioning, and customer value propositions. Along with these decision-rights, product managers are authorized to bring everyone together so they can move quickly to realize market opportunities while staying ahead of competitors. They become their companies’ chief integrators, champions and General Managers for the product’s business. Tier 3 product managers carry significant corporate responsibility and require keen business acumen, an entrepreneurial mindset, and skillful management of stakeholders.

Each of these three options provides a distinctive path for a company’s Product Management function. What they hold in common is that once people have a clear understanding of decisions their product managers should be making, the company ends up with faster decision-making and higher-quality decisions.

I feel strongly that for product management to succeed, you must reach the tier 3 level. At least product management organizations should aspire to that level.

When Neil McElroy wrote the memo that defined ‘Brand Men’ at Procter & Gamble that today is considered the founding of the modern product management profession, like any good product manager, he was solving a problem: cross functional responsibility of the business health and success of a product. He didn't state they needed product managers to make better feature selections for the next generation of soap.

But his proposed job description was novel for 1931: the new hires should be accountable for an individual brand from top to bottom. This brand- or product-centric approach was a departure from the top-down, functional organizations that typified workplaces in the 1930s. Orienting so-called “brand managers” around a specific brand in many ways set the stage for product management as we know it today.

As Ken Norton of ‘Bring the Donuts’ states: 'What McElroy wanted to do was to give a single person (and their team) ownership over a complete brand and put them next to the customer. One person would be wholly accountable for that package of Ivory Soap that sat on the supermarket shelf. That manager would come to understand Ivory’s customers deeply, execute on improving the product, track and monitor sales closely, and deliver results.'

Yes, wholly accountable. Not just the feature picker from JIRA and then make a good looking roadmap for executives and sales. Nope. Someone who own the product and it's health. As Jim Berardone states: The goal of Product Management is to maximize the value created by a product for its customers, investors and employees across its life cycle.

That value isn’t limited to feature selection.

So what happened that we ended up here?

I blame two things:

? The Agile Manifesto

? Google product management orientation—and pay

Let's start with Agile. In early 2001, against the backdrop of the Wasatch Mountains, in Snowbird, Utah, 17 people met to discuss the future of software development. The group’s members shared a frustration about the current state of affairs, even if they disagreed about how to remedy the situation.

The problem, they agreed, was that companies were so focused on excessively planning and documenting their software development cycles that they lost sight of what really mattered—pleasing their customers.

As the old joke goes about the manifesto, you know something is wrong when 17 people get together in Utah at a ski resort and no one goes skiing.

This is a huge rabbit hole, since the majority of these individuals had worked on large and complex IT software projects, and not no commercial software products. The problem set is different because the customer is different. Still, independent software vendors also adopted Agile, as did the world.

From the Agile Manifesto the role of product owners was defined.

The Product Owner (PO) is the Agile team member primarily responsible for maximizing the value delivered by the team by ensuring that the team backlog is aligned with customer and stakeholder needs.

Sounds reasonable. The PO is a customer proxy and aligns the backlog with those needs. That's great when the PO can talk to those customers inside the organization that it's building the application for almost like a business analyst. However it's a little more challenging whne you have hundreds or even thousands of customers. From all different companies, cultures, values, requirements, etc. Sure a large complex application shares some aspects, but in their very nature they differ from ‘who is the customer’. The PO , with the rise of Agiule, also relegated the Product Management role to backlog selection. It set back PM. And it's taken 22 years' for companies to realize it's a fairly pointless role. https://austinyang.co/why-product-owner-is-a-pointless-role/ (Make sure ot check our Melssia Perri’s link in the article)

Ok, with that let's talk Google.

Google hired and valued technical product managers for many years' and treasured them based on their technical skills. Google requires its PMs to be solidly technical. So you have this world-dominating, amazingly successful company that also pays very well, and people want to emulate it in every way. And so if you want product managers now they must also be technical! I saw it at Carnegie Mellon where I started the worlds first product management degree, supported by a Dean who was an ex-Googler. The students had to be technical! Which is unfortunate. Because I have worked with many talented and effective product managers with degrees in psychology, history, English and more. I have an engineering degree, and it gave me some basic resect from engineers and developers. But I can tell you communications and leadership skills are as if not more important. And I am here to tell you: you don’t need to have a technical background to be a successful product manager. And there are many pitfats of being technical and being a priodcut manager. One is you dont have a beginners mind about what is possible, so often boudnaries of innovation are not pushed. Second, and this happens a lot, more technical product managers corss the boudnaries of their role. They move from owning and definikng the ‘what’ of a product into the ‘how’ of engineering, because they can and they may even be confortable there. When they ge t pushback from an engineer they argue HOW it can be done better or faster. Bad move. That undermines trust and effectiveness.

So don't fall for it. Product managers own the business health of their product and need not be technical.

I will state the ideal role of a product manager is to be a business leader rather than merely a feature picker. Here's a breakdown of these two parts:

1. Business Leadership: Strategic

a.) Vision: A product manager should have a clear strategic vision for the product. They need to understand the market, customer needs, and the overall business goals. They should be able to set long-term product goals and direction aligned with the company's vision

b.) Market Analysis/Product Discovery: Product managers need to continually analyze the market, competition, and emerging trends. This information helps them make informed decisions about the product's direction and prioritize features that will drive business success.

c.) Financial Acumen: Understanding the financial aspects of product management, such as cost-benefit analysis, pricing strategies, and revenue projections, is crucial for making sound business decisions.

d.) Cross-Functional Collaboration: Effective product managers collaborate with various teams, including engineering, design, marketing, and sales, to ensure the product's success. They bridge the gap between technical teams and business stakeholders.

e.) Customer Focus: A focus on customer needs and feedback is essential. Product managers should advocate for the customer and ensure that the product addresses their pain points and provides value.

2. Feature Selection: Prioritization: Part of a product manager's role is to prioritize features and enhancements based on their strategic importance, impact on customers, and alignment with business goals. Prioritization should be data-driven and strategic.

a.) User Stories: While selecting features, product managers often create user stories or requirements that guide development teams. These should be clear, concise, and aligned with the product's goals.

b.) Iteration: In Agile development methodologies, product managers may need to select features for shorter development cycles. This allows for rapid iteration and continuous improvement based on user feedback.

c.) Market Fit: Ensuring that the product's features align with market demands and customer needs is essential for product success.

In some organizations, especially those that may not fully understand or appreciate the strategic role of product management, product managers might be more focused on tactical aspects, which can make them seem like "feature pickers." However, in progressive and mature product management environments, the emphasis is on strategic leadership and making decisions that drive the business forward.

It's important for product managers to advocate for their strategic role, educate stakeholders about the value they bring to the organization, and actively contribute to the company's growth and success by aligning product development with business objectives. The role of a product manager should ideally encompass both strategic leadership and effective feature selection to create successful products.