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The product manager role is a mistake

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Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#231

Post by BlackJack »

aeternum wrote: post #135
snapetom wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every thing you just said rings true. I went from 20 years engineering into engineering management, and took my first PM role last year. I took the role at a twenty year-old software company that's never had good product management, and the place is horrible. Over and over, the staff were pounded with "we are an engineering first company." Well, that means the engineering teams were allowed to do whatever the hell th…

In my experience, the vast majority of PMs could not describe the difference between TLS 1.3 and 1.x. The problems you describe are legit but unless you have extremely technical product managers, hiring more PMs will only make the problem worse.

A good PM doesn't have to know the differences, but should understand that mixing encryption protocols is going to break things. Ideally an eng lead would be flagging these issues.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#232

Post by TeMPOraL »

starky wrote: post #89
glimshe wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you had a project manager, not a product manager. A good product manager is very valuable.

Last time I saw one of these types of articles on here it quickly became apparent that a lot of companies don't know the difference and call their project managers by the wrong name.

What is the difference then, between a project manager, product manager, a project owner and a product owner? Always thought they're approximately the same thing. Isn't any product you're working on a project too?

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#233

Post by TeMPOraL »

alonsonic wrote: post #116
elicksaur wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like whoever named these titles did a poor job. They’re so close, can you blame people for not seeing a difference? What is a product but a large project anyways?

A product manager is expected to view things from a business point of view. To identify features for the product and help it succeed in the market. A project manager is in charge of planing, execution and governance of a project. They don’t define any of the goals or vision. Saying product is a large project is a big over simplification. If we go that route anything could be called a “large project”.

> Saying product is a large project is a big over simplification. If we go that route anything could be called a “large project”.

Yes. That's precisely the point. What's the difference between "X manager" and a "project manager" when the X itself is obviously a project?

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#234

Post by bjornsing »

jeppester wrote: post #182

"But the more somebody is mediocre, the more likely they are to be put off by this intensity and passion. The more they’re willing to compromise, to lower standards, and to cut corners." There is IMO no correlation between being mediocre and being put off by intensity and passion. Overall I think this article generalizes a lot. I can't say for sure that the article is not applicable to a certain part of the industry,…

> There is IMO no correlation between being mediocre and being put off by intensity and passion.

A lot of people hate those that outshine them, or “make them look bad” (in comparison). It’s sadly a part of human nature.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#235

Post by TeMPOraL »

tcmb wrote: post #120
elicksaur wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like whoever named these titles did a poor job. They’re so close, can you blame people for not seeing a difference? What is a product but a large project anyways?

A project has a planned end date, a product typically doesn't.

Isn't it the other way around? Projects tend to never end. Products eventually get released.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#237

Post by rogerclark »

At Apple, we had Project Managers (for instance "Engineering Project Managers" or EPMs). These PMs were not our bosses, and functioned as our peers in the organizations. They had a well-defined role: to facilitate the project being completed and to manage the dependencies with other teams and projects. Apple PMs do this through a combination of meetings, Radar (issue tracking), and interfacing with ICs and their managers.

This is different from the "Product Manager" at other companies which typically "owns" a product's direction and has authority over the people building it. That mixes project management with people management, politics, and worst of all, ego.

I never worked with an EPM at Apple that caused interpersonal problems. They all just wanted to fix bugs, figure out what we could and couldn't do in a specific timeframe, and release products on schedule. IMO, this is one aspect of Apple's organizational process that other companies should emulate, but I've never encountered it anywhere else. Maybe this kind of thing can only work at large companies that can afford to hire people for such a well-defined role.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#238

Post by saulpw »

xorcist wrote: post #223
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, but it's still not something engineers do well. Imagine developing an AAA game with no one in charge of the overall product. Or creating a movie without a producer or a director, expecting the talent to somehow organise itself. PM isn't an engineering job, it's a vision job - one that needs enough technical knowledge to create a vision that's grounded in reality, while also appealing to customers, while also…

That was well put. Imagine that. Still we train our product managers to follow checklists, write endless documents about personas, have discussions about methodology and such things only loosely connected to the work that goes into making the actual product. Imagine if a director was a bureaucrat. One who followed checklists and made policy documents, and did not have the slightest clue about the actual craft of sett…

> What's our profession's equivalent of a film director?

Scrum master.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#239

Post by diogenescynic »

Half of the product managers I have worked or interacted with don't have any real expertise and seem to have just fallen into the role. As a result, I don't think they often understand the complexities of their cross-functional stakeholders/peers and how things need to be completed in order to deliver a functional deliverable.

Re: The product manager role is a mistake

#240

Post by trog »

marcosdumay wrote: post #162
midasuni wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes you need a formal project. We’re kitting out a new office over the next couple of years, it’s a major programme of multiple projects, all which interact. At the end of it though we have a building fit for purposes following the plans currently set. I’m sure those plans will adjust a little, but the end date is January 2025, or July, or something - I’m sure the date will slip. You can’t build a £20m facility…

Well, the Empire State Building was famously built as a series of sprints... You need a formal design. This doesn't mean you need a formal project. Some amount of planning ahead very obviously helps, but how much is debatable, and when you have people whose sole specialization is "planning ahead", you are certainly past the point where it's too much. Anyway, the most valuable people are the ones "planning behind", lo…

Think of the "formal project" is the API by which executing the design can be understood by all stakeholders.

It is a high level abstraction that allows all parties to understand what they need to do and when they need to do it. For large projects it is simply essential - you need your external vendors to plan their availability, months or sometimes years in ahead, so that they can commit to the timeline.

If you're lucky enough to work on large software projects where there are no managers or other stakeholders asking "and how long will this take, exactly?" then maybe the design is enough.

But pretending planning ahead on large projects that is something that will just happen by osmosis or people "just doing it" simply won't work. Good project managers who do what they're supposed to are worth their weight in gold (just like good product managers).

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