

Educator | Product Person | Photographer
However, managing to outcomes is much more difficult as it dispenses with the pretence that we can predict the future, know exactly how our software will look and function and what our customers will do with it when they finally get to use it. How then do we build product roadmaps in a world of continuous improvement, learning and agility?
With all this in mind, though, my default position is that the vast majority of product teams are better off being led by a small group of cross-functional owners as opposed to the outdated notion of “the PM as the CEO of the product”. The most effective product teams are those where the leads on Product, Design, and Engineering (and sometimes other functions like marketing, customer service, and data science) are all mutually bought in to being experts at understanding the vision, the customer, and have shared ownership of the outcome. This means that a Product Manager should often defer to Engineering or Design when key decisions need to be made, specifically when those other functions are better fit to make those decisions. And that’s often the case! I would argue that a great PM also shows “Founder’s Feel” by referring to…
…ng empowered in wartime requires an order of magnitude more trust than being empowered in peacetime. In the most extreme cases, the founders or board members may take control of the roadmap even from the product leadership, at which point it’s not just one product team that’s been disempowered, but the entire product organisation.