You’re The Product

As I transitioned into a Product Manager role last year and learned as much as I could with still a long road ahead, I’d like to share my view on a few general things about Product Management. These things are most probably applicable in different flavours to all product companies in tech, especially to those that are on their way to becoming a tech unicorn. So here we go:

Doing small things right will lead to massive improvements over time. Just as in the lean product development, when you incrementally build things right you’ll save yourself a lot of time on the long haul. You just need to be careful to also build the right things while you’re developing things right. Improve the user experience! Fix those annoying bugs!

You are not the CEO. Many Product Management books and blogs will tell you that the Product Manager is the CEO of the product. This couldn’t be more further away from the truth. You have no authority over the Commercial, Design, Development, Marketing, <insert other department here>. While you have no authority, you are still the one responsible if the product is not successful. So how do you make sure the product gets out in the market? Influence — this is the most important skill a Product Manager needs to have. If you’re hiring PMs, make sure they have this skill. A Product Manager is exactly like a Central Nervous System. The definition of Wikipedia is self-explanatory.

A lot of people will have a hard time understanding the differences between Project Managers, Product Managers and Programme Managers. They are all PMs after all…right? Some say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here you go:

I won’t go into details here, but the picture shows how I model the differences between these three different things.

Build a culture of transparency. Build your roadmap. Make it public. Establish your KPIs and create a system where they can be monitored. Make it public. You see the pattern, right? Having this will help in multiple ways. It will build synergies between engineers when they see the ROI of their work. It will create accountability. It will make everyone more open to you. The numbers don’t look that good? Focus on improving them rather than building shiny new things.

These are only a few of the last years’ learnings. I’ll cover the next ones in another blog.

Dear PM, regardless of what people tell you, you can be summed up to a simple thing: you’re the product. What you build and ship it is your representation. It is your legacy. It is the sum of all your efforts and decisions. Are you proud of your legacy?