Perhaps I should have called this post ‘product balls’
Product people often arrive in their roles from disciplines such as business development, technology, marketing or design. Irrespective of your path into product you’ll obviously end up with strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others. It stands to reason then that you’ve got to protect your blind side. UX-focused product people need to listen to technologists with a keen ear, technologists need to listen carefully to business-centric requirements and turn them into values and constraints — your personal bias informs where you need to focus extra attention.
What I found useful as a model for identifying areas requiring attention in a technology company is to look at the organisation focused through a product bias lens. It’s a really simple idea and it’s easiest just to dive in with some diagrams. …
One of the trickiest things to do is hire product managers in tech companies. Having put in place a successful product team at Unruly and worked extensively with numerous teams large and small I thought I’d note down my thoughts on how I approach it.
Definition of a product manager
The number one issue with the job role of product is its ambiguous and flexible definition. By its very nature, a product job requires a lot of cross functional skills. It’s really important to be clear on where exactly the product function fits in across your organisation:
- CEOs/entrepreneurs often identify that taking on a product management role frees them up to focus on other aspects of the business. It helps to be very clear on what the areas the CEO wants to delegate and move on to are, as this will help identify what kind of product manager you are hiring for. …
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