From Managing People to Managing the Product.
Transitioning from being a Project Manager to becoming a Product Manager is not always easy, it calls for a significant shift from managing teams to becoming an individual player who supports the team through managing the Product Backlog. Project Managers often come from a technical background and climb up the ladder in the traditional way, from being a developer to Team Lead to Project Management. Agile calls for a very different approach, forming self-configuring and self-managing teams. The team essentially works on a pull system where they pull the prioritized product backlog items.
Understand the business aspects of the product - Developers turned Project Managers are often experts at technology and become SME's in their given space, guiding and managing team members to deliver the project. It is important that they supplement their technical know-how with adequate business understanding including but not limited to ROI of the product, Market Rhythms, understanding customer needs and the impact of the features that they will deliver.
Understand the principles of product development flow - The book by Donald Reinertsen is an eye-opener for a lot of us and provides deep insights into what we have been doing incorrectly so far in terms of realizing actual economic value. It stresses reducing batch sizes, allowing for variability, WIP constraints, and quick feedback cycles to achieve flow. This book is a must-read for anyone getting into a product management role.
Learn about Market research - I mostly see a lot of ideas and innovations are personal to individuals or teams and a lot of them are absolutely fantastic but have little backing for its hypothesis in terms of market research. While a great idea can originate from the top of your heads, we are trying to achieve a regular flow of good ideas and innovation. Market research can take you a long way in understanding customer pain areas allowing you to think of solutions. Wonderful tools like personas, empathy maps, empathy interviews, and Gemba walks can help you get in the shoes of the user and bring real meaning and value to your user stories.
Let go of the teams - This one is easier said than done for most Managers. As a project manager, you may have been managing teams for many years and used to be a conductor who orchestrates the work being done. But now the Product Backlog is not the only thing left for you to manage. While the teams are self-managing you still need to manage expectations, orchestrate market needs, stakeholders, timely releases and ensure that the cadence is producing a releasable product at timely intervals.
Get adept at Prioritising the backlog - The Backlog is the most important artifact for the Product Manager and Owner. While the PO should ideally have the backlog ready for the next two iterations, the PM has to look further, to the next program increment/ business quarter. The PM should ensure that features on the backlog are well analyzed and researched. In addition, he should coordinate with Enterprise architect to ensure the architectural runway will be available for the features to consume, and that vendors, if needed, have been identified and contracted as per the requirement.
Manage Change - Most managers are tuned to reduce variability and strive for stability and predictability in the product lifecycle. In agile while we strive for predictability of the outcome and output, we give room for variabillity. Lack of variability also results in a lack of innovation and creativity. While we are adapting and adjusting at every iteration and PI boundary the change must be actively managed to ensure that the teams churn out valuable features at every boundary.
Have a vision and Roadmap for the product - A Product Manager has to be visionary in terms of how he sees the product over the next few months, quarters and even years. A vision could seem far stretched and sometimes even unrealistic if we look at it only in terms of currently existing technology. A vision doesn't just give us a glimpse of the product's future but also rallies the team with a sense of purpose. A roadmap is more detailed in the near term, setting out the timeline of the new features which will be delivered by teams through user stories.
It is a good idea to have your own kanban in place to track your transition into your new role of being a product manager. Having an understanding of where we are and where we need to go is the first step in taking charge of your own journey on this path. Product Management can be extremely rewarding as you see the effectiveness by which the product continues to evolve and bring your vision to fruition.
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