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Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager vs. Product Owner

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

#91

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

ryandrake wrote: post #88
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know--I think there are plenty of developers who would love to have more of a say in what they're building, rather than toiling away building someone else's pet feature that they (the developer) know is going to fail.

A lot of developers think that way, just like everyone else in their jobs, thinking they could do it better.

When they realize it's more soft skill oriented, endless meetings, power point deck after power point deck, stakeholder after stakeholder, and 1 hour left to code, they finally get the picture.

I was once that developer, thinking I knew what was best for everything. I scoffed at management and project managers. Now I know the real truth - their job is way harder than it seems.

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

#92

Post by mathattack »

ryandrake wrote: post #85
ako wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Depends on the company. I worked for a small company that was a real clown show. Sales would come down to the engineering area and say things like "I just closed a huuuuuuge sale for the company. We need a product that does A, B, and C, now so we can deliver it!" And, that became engineering's scope for the next 4 weeks...

I’ve been at similar though 4 weeks would have been generous.

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

#93

Post by fooblat »

Closi wrote: post #65
fooblat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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've been a Product Owner and been responsible for the product strategy, feature roadmap, backlog refinement and management of external stakeholders, reporting up through product leadership. I've also been in a company that had "Product Managers" and "Product Owners", where "Product Manager" was just a more senior Product Owner, and the "Product Owners" reported into the "Product Managers". All I mean is that - it's…

This is my experience as well. You must always ask for a detailed description for these roles.

I've even seen companies that have a role called "Product Manager Owner" with a vague enough description that it could be either or both.

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

#94

Post by city41 »

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…

On a related note, it's really important to hire a solid PM and keep them on for the life of the product, or at the very least through major releases. I worked on a product where the PM got changed several times and it caused total havoc and pretty much killed the project dead as basically each new PM thought the previous direction was wrong.

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

#95

Post by RocketSyntax »

Depending on where your product is in its lifecycle, you need to rotate between all 3 activities. You shouldn't be doing the same thing all the time.

After a big build, I'll tell the engineering team, hey, the requirements are going to be fuzzy for a while. look the the engineering manager while I work on launching this thing w commercial teams, and figuring out what we should build next. when that's done, I'll tell the commercial team the same thing about my commercial support

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

#96

Post by mongol »

ryandrake wrote: post #85
ako wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Depends on the company. I worked for a small company that was a real clown show. Sales would come down to the engineering area and say things like "I just closed a huuuuuuge sale for the company. We need a product that does A, B, and C, now so we can deliver it!" And, that became engineering's scope for the next 4 weeks...

Yes small companies commonly works like this. Basically, they hustle sales and the development team needs to cover for them.

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

#98

Post by RocketSyntax »

dkarpezo wrote: post #24

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.

I'd say PO isn't so much involved in determining the "what" to build, they are moreso executing on it. engineering manager is more of the team's boss

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

#99

Post by lazide »

k__ wrote: post #49
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…

I think, you're right. I'd even go as far as saying management roles aren't needed at all below the C-level. The problem is that many companies already moved their engineers and designers away from the customer, and I think this model only works with small autonomous teams that talk direktly with customers. Most engineers don't even want to talk with customers, they just want to solve what they think is the most impo…

There is the 'only so much time in the day' issue too. If you have millions (or even 1000's if they are high touch) of customers, you'll never be able to code if you're spending your time talking to them - and it will probably be required to develop specialized skills in talking to them too.

At some point, specialization has to happen. It also has drawbacks. Small teams are often dramatically more effective than large teams for similar reasons (ownership of the problem, less communication/education overhead), but they can only scale so far.

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

#100

Post by SaltyBackendGuy »

alexpetralia wrote: post #79
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 have alternatively heard this distinguished as: - UX Product Managers (close to users) - Technical Product Managers (close to developers) I've written about this a little bit here for the curious: https://alexpetralia.com/posts/2019/10/14/product-management...

> Technical Product Managers (close to developers)

In my humble experience, I think the real value of a TPM is being the interface between management and technology. They're able to frame technical jargon in a way that the business can understand. i.e. Why we have to do this refactor? If we don't it will cost the company money. (contrive but you get the point)

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