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Product management is hosting a party, not playing chess

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Re: Product management is hosting a party, not playing chess

#21

Post by risenshinetech »

crmd wrote: post #18

Having a sales meeting with the CIO, CTO, VP Procurement, etc. of a Fortune 500 company is unlike any conversation a non-customer facing engineer would have ever had in their life. Dealing with these people is like golden gloves boxing. Every other move they make is a head fake or a trap. Before you open your mouth and take one step forward, you better have your back foot planted or else they're going to knock you on…

> I don't understand why the author seemingly takes offense that sending an untrained person into a high-stakes scenario isn't something most companies do.

Because then they wouldn't be able to write these sorts of outrage-porn clickbait articles with righteous indignation.

Re: Product management is hosting a party, not playing chess

#23

Post by thwarted »

jawns wrote: post #15
charliebwrites wrote: post #8

Product Management is hosting a party... ...but the venue owner wants the staff to do insane party tricks instead of buy chips and soda ...and wants to take half the guests off the list because they invited too many people ...and wants to change the theme 12 hours before the party starts, because they're _certain_ the party goers will love this new theme (despite never talking to them) Your job as a PM is to make sur…

It sounds like advice I've given to men serving as the Best Man and women serving as the Maid/Matron of Honor at a wedding. Your job isn't just ceremonial. It is to make sure that if anything unexpected comes up, you solve it in such a way that the newlyweds don't even know it happened.

Then these roles should be more involved with the wedding planning process. Neither the best man nor the maid of honor have the budget nor the authority to make sure things go smoothly.

Re: Product management is hosting a party, not playing chess

#24

Post by Joel_Mckay »

EDS had some fun marketing around project management:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_dgWl83cTM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz1iNSqqixc

And still ended up defunct:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Data_Systems

I settled on this methodology years ago, and try to accept people as they are... rather than how I'd like them to be...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERT

i.e. if a key item is taking too long, than spawn a redundant replacement permutation. Once either key deliverable is received, restructure the under-performing division.

Lets be honest, some people are happy being a liability... and they belong with your competition. lol =3

Re: Product management is hosting a party, not playing chess

#25

Post by computronus »

klodolph wrote: post #4

Seems like there are some steps missing between the quoted at the beginning and the outrage in the article. I don’t really understand the specifics of the complaint. My main thought reading the quote at the top is, “you shouldn’t call people ‘neckbeards’”. But it is also true that not all engineers want to talk to customers. Don’t judge a fish by how well they ride a bicycle, and all that. “It takes all kinds” is a b…

By my reading, the outrage is likely coming from the cushioned stereotyping from the podcast participant. They're stating that "neckbeard types" and autists aren't customer-ready and are uncomfortable talking with customers. That second part is worse because it may lead to assuming that those folks would never want to talk to customers, or even learn how, and so the PMs might "protect" them by never offering them the chance, while assuring themselves "that's okay, that's great, I mean it takes all kinds".

Re: Product management is hosting a party, not playing chess

#26

Post by spacecadet »

chadash wrote: post #13

I think that software engineering is about two things: building things the right way and building the right things . The second one is more important than the first one. If you don't build the right product, it doesn't matter how well it scales or how it has amazing test coverage or wonderful documentation. To that end, I think that too many managers (and companies) do too much shielding of engineers from customers.…

You are given a figma that wasn't already researched and validated against requirements? If it takes a week for a team to fiddle around with a design asset only to learn customers/clients would be fine with a simpler approach, everyone failed the assignment. This was intended as a rhetorical question... I know many teams let designers waste tons of time in a vacuum and PMs are off in lalaland focused on the wrong activities, when they should be focused "building the right thing" and carefully validating that and communicating outcomes to the team and customers. Im all for letting Engineers along for the ride, but too often they (more the jr mid-level ones) are checked out during that process, not asking implementation questions or contributing to research process, until its all hindsight.

Re: Product management is hosting a party, not playing chess

#27

Post by neilv »

So many anecdotes where people could've used this message.

For example, I saw a non-technical leader, who thought they were the relationships person, and would try achieve a vibe with customer and partner teams.

And when team members said they needed access, the leader once inadvertently revealed their disgust at the idea of nerds ruining that vibe.

Suffice it to say that the most key relationships, which were temporarily charmed, eventually got very un-charmed, due to the inevitable effects of silo-ing customer exposure.

The article suggests that, even if the leader thought that the team members were nerds who'd cramp their style, they should instead be gracious party hosts, and figure out how to introduce the "nerds" to the "party".

Re: Product management is hosting a party, not playing chess

#29

Post by cm11 »

charliebwrites wrote: post #8

Product Management is hosting a party... ...but the venue owner wants the staff to do insane party tricks instead of buy chips and soda ...and wants to take half the guests off the list because they invited too many people ...and wants to change the theme 12 hours before the party starts, because they're _certain_ the party goers will love this new theme (despite never talking to them) Your job as a PM is to make sur…

The problem is that the PM—the role (and sometimes the person)—at this party enables this.

1. We can think this sort of agility is good (and the outcomes better because of it). If so, we are at the least saying the PM doesn't know or arbitrate what's good. The half of the PM job that is planning and visioning is being done by the owner and the PM receives it. The PM work here is reshuffling the new, late, non-ideal constraints into something where the team actually can and does implement it. That work is real, but it's best case scenario. PMs can also pass on the "entropy"—taking the problems they've received from the owner and simply relaying them to the team. That's not so additive.

2. We can think of this sort of agility as bad. If the asks are ridiculous—and the PM doesn't push back—then the team has the problems and a buffer between them and anyone who could do anything about it. The changes you mention are ones that could have been known earlier. These aren't sudden environmental changes, these are ones that should have been planned for. That is in some way or form the PM's responsibility to stabilize. Are there bad executives who do whimsical things like this? Yes, they hire PMs (intentionally or not) to make it easier for them to do it.

When PMs are good, they frequently and actively go against the company/leadership. PM as a job description is a leader with no power. PMs as people either find a way to make those untenable things work (which means the current problem is fixed, but the company has a leadership problem) or they don't (which means the current problem becomes the ICs' problems and there is no feedback mechanism to leadership).

Re: Product management is hosting a party, not playing chess

#30

Post by sambeau »

QuercusMax wrote: post #28
sambeau wrote: post #2

My metaphor for product leadership is a Jazz Band: step back and let your players shine.

You still gotta call the tunes, though. Leadership vacuum is a real thing that can cause a lot of damage.

Of course—that's how a Jazz Band works.
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