81–90 of 122 posts
There's manager in these tittles, but if any of them has any number of direct reports (or worst, if the devs are managed by any of these 'managers') you are doing something wrong.
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.
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I would say 1 salesperson in 20 has the ability, interest and influence to alter a product roadmap. The other 19 exist because of their competitive drive and ability to bang their head against a wall without losing enthusiasm.
In my experience 100% of salespeople will try to influence the product roadmap if it means they can sign a new deal
Salespeople usually have more influence on the customers than on the roadmap, so they're better of trying to influence the decision making of the customer, than the product.
Salespeople focus on their sales targets, trying to change a product roadmap is not a very effective way to reach short term targets.
Obviously, a product manager should reach out to sales to try and understand their perspective on the product and the customer needs.
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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…
Not intended as a rhetorical question, can you describe the dynamics of a long-term successful team where the PM had more business expertise than the engineer? I agree with the division of labor you describe, in principle, but I've never had the opportunity to observe it in practice. Maybe I've only worked at places that are not old + big enough yet. In the (relatively few!) teams I've known, the PM's business expert…
It's pretty rare to see engineers that know the industry as well as the PMs, so we focus heavily on having good communication and dedicating time to make sure features are well understood before any work starts. Our structure works well for us, but I can definitely see how it would be advantageous, where possible, to have engineers who knew more about the business.
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In my experience 100% of salespeople will try to influence the product roadmap if it means they can sign a new deal
Usually any impact a salesperson has over the product roadmap is too slow to have any impact on the sales opportunity. Salespeople usually have more influence on the customers than on the roadmap, so they're better of trying to influence the decision making of the customer, than the product. Salespeople focus on their sales targets, trying to change a product roadmap is not a very effective way to reach short term ta…
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> It is way better to empower the tech and UX people And who empowers them if not the PM ? I mean in theory you could say that to get a product, you only need a designer and a developer. But you know the reality is different. This is not a hazard that most successful tech companies have PM (except Apple)
Thanks for the comment! I know that I am putting something out here, which is definitely controversial. I was a PM myself for a long time... To your question: I think it is the role of management to empower the devs and UX people. To your point about Apple: Isn't it amazing that one of the or even the most successful company on this planet doesn't have any PMs?
An example, Apple Pay Product Manager: https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200185069/apple-pay-pro...
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Thanks for the comment! I know that I am putting something out here, which is definitely controversial. I was a PM myself for a long time... To your question: I think it is the role of management to empower the devs and UX people. To your point about Apple: Isn't it amazing that one of the or even the most successful company on this planet doesn't have any PMs?
One role of the PM is to close gaps between departments and make people work together toward the same goal. It is very hard for a manager to do the same thing. For a PM it is easier because he is not the boss of anyone and don't try to gain power over other's stuff. On the other side if a manager is trying to do the same thing, you will have other managers try to protect their department. As for Apple, yeah they are…
The tough part about doing this is when you hire engineers, you need to also interview for good product sense and have more emphasis on soft skills. Not easy to find.
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That sounds like you had several people to do one person's job, not like it's a job that doesn't need to be done. Solid UX people think like product people, but you either over-burden them, have them shift part of their roles off to others (research, user testing, etc),or do both jobs poorly. Good product people not also doing design, research, technical work, etc...they should be able to manage several teams / proje…
Yep. This all sounds nice, but developers/designers rarely want to do PM work. The PM position is as much a creation of developers who don't want to interact as it is management. Even developers that do don't want to spend all day in meetings. A PM can help there.
The difference between product manager and product owner is subtle enough that it doesn’t make too much difference in my experience. What’s a product owner at one company is a product manager at another and visa-versa. The one with marketing in the title is about marketing rather than product management.
For me the difference is stark. At my last three companies it worked like this: Product Manager is responsible for the product strategy and feature roadmap. They spend most of their focus on internal and external customers. They report up through Product leadership. Product Owner is part of the engineering squad. They spend most of their focus on the engineers building the product. The PO works on refinement, priorit…
I'm one of those rare people. I do not recommend it.
While I love my product and believe in the company I work for, I've seriously considered leaving so I can actually focus on one thing or the other.
For what it's worth, I'm a former full stack developer who transitioned into the product role. This means I have the technical skillset to translate for my dev teams. This is a blessing and a curse while wearing both hats.
I recently decided to dig into that discussion in my post: "Software Projects vs Software Products": https://www.romenrg.com/blog/2020/12/30/software-projects-vs...