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Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

damilolaa.xyz

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Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#21

Post by zestyping »

harryf wrote: post #18

Having done all three roles either formally or informally (after 15 years development) the key thing a product manager has to do is follow Steve Blanks advice and get out of the building. OK not in times of COVID but there has to be someone who actually talks to customers or potential customers in person and builds _qualitative_ opinions / insight into what really needs to be built and where the real opportunities ar…

Agreed. There's nothing like being in the field with real users.

Ideally, you don't just talk to them. You watch them work. Observe, and gather clues about what will serve their needs. And when people tell you what they think they want, don't assume that's the product spec; treat that also as an opportunity to listen to clues that will help you understand their needs.

The best products are designed around how people work, not necessarily what people say about how they work.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#22

Post by DamilolaA »

grandvoye wrote: post #12
baxtr wrote: post #4

That reminds me of the time I was heading the Product Management department of a large company. We had so many discussion about what a Product Owner, Manager, Technical Product Manager is. Their role. Their responsibilities. Endless discussion with much feelings involved about respect, ownership and so on. Nowadays I am convinced that a great company just doesn't need any PMs. It is way better to empower the tech and…

The challenge I've had with that model is that as a company gets more complex, having someone whose sole job is to focus on the business technology interface is invaluable as people start to specialize. It's often more valuable to have engineers with (say) 6/10 expertise in the business and 10/10 expertise in their technology domain, working alongside PMs with 10/10 expertise in the business and 6/10 expertise in the…

I agree but I don't think an individual can be 10/10 in both domains like you inferred. I think there will always be the need for a product person outside the engineers and developers.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#24

Post by dkarpezo »

Project Manager is a manager, it's a role from a formal process (waterfall). Product Owner is not a manager, it's an agile role. You can't compare them directly.

P.S. In real life PM/PO are almost the same -- as people usually don't care about following metodology. PM/PO is just a kind of team's boss.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#25

Post by rodelrod »

DamilolaA wrote: post #20
harryf wrote: post #18

Having done all three roles either formally or informally (after 15 years development) the key thing a product manager has to do is follow Steve Blanks advice and get out of the building. OK not in times of COVID but there has to be someone who actually talks to customers or potential customers in person and builds _qualitative_ opinions / insight into what really needs to be built and where the real opportunities ar…

I agree but how do you keep abreast of this best practice in times of COVID? Product Analytics might just be the life saver.

Product analytics may tell you what is happening, but they won't tell you why it's happening. To your question, I don't really have a good answer. From a B2B SaaS perspective, we try to complement analytics with a lot of video calls but that's not nearly as good as sitting next to people while they do the work.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#26

Post by rubidium »

hayksaakian wrote: post #10

Sounds like a recipe for bureaucracy and ambiguous leadership. I can't imagine this ever working outside of a tech company with fat enough margins to keep 3 separate leads on an individual team.

Not really. I work in a device development company. We have a technical product manager (understand what the market and customers want), commercial product manager (aid sales to sell what we have and introduce new products commercially) and product development lead for each new product. Dev lead is typically full time on 1 product being developed. Product managers are typically cover a product line. All three roles are full time jobs and operate distinctly.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#27

Post by greatgib »

All of that to transform developers and "software engineers" into stupid micro-managed monkeys, just good to write code.

The worse is the product owner. Sadly the management world did profite of the hype of scrum to add this bullshit job but just a reminder:. It goes against the original concepts of Agile!

In the original Agile the product owner is the customer, and the goal was to have the devs in direct contact with the customer. It is not supposed to be an employee, with some management level, that tell you what and in which orders things have to be done, because he or she knows better...

Now, the devs are more than even isolated from the customer by bullshit jobs in between. This is very sad...

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#28

Post by axlee »

greatgib wrote: post #27

All of that to transform developers and "software engineers" into stupid micro-managed monkeys, just good to write code. The worse is the product owner. Sadly the management world did profite of the hype of scrum to add this bullshit job but just a reminder:. It goes against the original concepts of Agile! In the original Agile the product owner is the customer, and the goal was to have the devs in direct contact wit…

I personnally appreciate someone making the rounds around all the stakeholders, booking meetings for me, finding who do I need to talk to to get a domain-specific answer, reporting to stakeholders on the progress, and more generally navigating the organization on my behalf. This stuff is just too time consuming to tackle on top of a development role, especially in a larger org.

note: we are a product organization, not consultants.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#29

Post by steve_gh »

putlake wrote: post #8
baxtr wrote: post #4

That reminds me of the time I was heading the Product Management department of a large company. We had so many discussion about what a Product Owner, Manager, Technical Product Manager is. Their role. Their responsibilities. Endless discussion with much feelings involved about respect, ownership and so on. Nowadays I am convinced that a great company just doesn't need any PMs. It is way better to empower the tech and…

Perhaps it works at your organization. I've been a PM where engineers and UX had no sense of ownership nor business sense. A PM's role is to understand what is important, how to prioritize, how to validate ideas fast, and how to avoid the tail wagging the dog (the tail could be UX, tech or your VP). If you have engineers and UX folks who can do this, more power to you!

> how to avoid the tail wagging the dog

Hahaha.

I once worked at a major telecoms equipment manufacturer. Our competition analysis group had two functions. One was to work out what our competitors were doing. But the really good people were tasked to find out what our engineering group was up to. Basically, they were powerful enough to do whatever they wanted, and screw the product managers and technical marketing folks who actually spoke to customers.

This company is basically no longer in existance.

Re: Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

#30

Post by cbogie »

harryf wrote: post #18

Having done all three roles either formally or informally (after 15 years development) the key thing a product manager has to do is follow Steve Blanks advice and get out of the building. OK not in times of COVID but there has to be someone who actually talks to customers or potential customers in person and builds _qualitative_ opinions / insight into what really needs to be built and where the real opportunities ar…

i’m an in-house recruiter and discovered steve banks’ advice on my own. why would i be in an office where everyone who i might hire is outside of that building?

while there are problems with that assertion, hiring is largely serendipity. as an extrovert, serendipity for me is found while out and about.

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