Three basic needs every product manager fulfills for her engineering team

Not so long ago, I had an introduction meeting with a new product manager who had just joined us. The meeting played out like most of my introductory meetings. But 5 minutes before it ended, she asked me:

“How can I, as a product manager, help you?”

You see, usually, it was the other way ‘round, so the question took me by pleasant surprise.

As a new employee

Asking “how can I help you?” as a new employee is the right thing to ask, if you think about it. The new hire was hired for a reason, right? She should try and find out what her role is by asking the relevant stakeholders how she can be of help. So how come not everyone asks this question? Maybe because, as a brand new employee, it seems a bit early to ask? I am not sure. I do know that the next time I have introductory meetings in a new company, I am certainly going to pose this question.

The basic needs

It was a good thing that I came prepared for our meeting, and I already knew my view of how product managers can help R&D.

It comes down to:

- The why

- Minimal Viable Product (MVP)

- Feedback.

The why

As Simon Sinek suggests in his book of the same name, “Start with why”.

Or think about the “So that” section in a User Story.

The product manager’s job regarding R&D is to explain why. Why feature prioritization is the way it is. Why a particular feature is so important. Why we expect customers to buy more of our product once we launch this new capability.

That’s it.

If you skip ”the why”, you are not doing your job. If your team does not know why they are doing what they are doing — you are not doing your job. Once the team understands why, you can bet that everyone is aligned and focused on solving the problem at hand.

Assaf Miron recently published this post about the PM’s role, describing where and how to explain why.

As an agile coach, I expect the product manager to own the problems, explain why they are worth solving and to make sure everyone understands, so that everybody is aligned, and everyone can contribute to the effort of solving a real customer problem.

Minimum Viable Product

We all know what Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is. A real MVP starts with a hypothesis. The whole essence of an MVP is to be able to test a product hypothesis with minimal resources. So, should you involve R&D when working on the MVP?

MVP and R&D

Not involving R&D while working on the MVP is a mistake.

This is because your R&D team is probably the most gifted team you can think of when it comes to your product environment.

They are the ones who understand what is going on and can think of ingenious ideas on how to implement a solution in the most efficient way.

Don’t come to them with the finished design and ask them to do it; come to them with the idea and engage them in making it come true.

As an agile coach, I expect the product manager to lead the team towards an MVP, pinpointing the hypothesis (the why), so that the team can find the fastest way to verify it.

Feedback

Feedback is maybe the most important single aspect for an R&D team.

Without it, the team doesn’t know what works and what doesn’t, what is valuable and what is useless.

The team could be highly productive, but if they can’t learn from their mistakes, and can’t understand what their customers think about their product, their productivity goes to waste.

A wise man once taught me the difference between efficient and effective:

“Being efficient is doing things right, being effective is doing the right things.”

Without real customer feedback, it is nearly impossible to do the right thing.

Ask the team what kind of feedback they need (quantitative, qualitative) and once you are able to provide it, ask them how they would like to incorporate it into their work.

As an agile coach, I expect the product manager to make sure the team gets continuous, actionable and reliable feedback, so that the team learns what to do to provide value to their customers.

So, my answer to that new product manager asking a great question…

A product manager who explains the reason why we are working on the problem at hand, that defines the hypothesis and engages the team in finding the minimal effort to test it, and who makes sure a continuous feedback loop exists for the team, is a product manager that pushes her team to its limits in all the right ways.

Do you agree? Would you answer the question differently? Would love to hear your view in the comments…