Pairing up: Product Management + People Ops

This is the first of a 2-part series about how the Product Management discipline can be a valuable partner to People Ops to create a meaningful working environment. Companies can no longer ignore the shift that is happening in the workplace: employees demand for greater meaning and purpose at work. What we learned as Product practitioners can be useful.

A good product manager is expected to be skillful in multiple areas. Product Management is certainly not the only discipline that have this demanding requirement. Others like Sales, Engineering, and Marketing also come with their own long list of skills to master. For example, to be a good Salesperson*, you must not only be flawless with your presentation and excellent with numbers, but persuasive writing can also be a tool crucially needed in your toolbox. However, rarely did we encounter a discipline, like Product Management, that requires such many diverse — dynamic, might be a better word — aptitude to be effective in the trade.

*Experienced first-hand that doing Sales is hard!

A product team is a group of people who bring together different specialized skills and responsibilities and feel real ownership for a product or at least a substantial piece of a larger product.

If we borrow Marty Cagan’s definition of a product team, it becomes clear that you must be deeply knowledgable in multiple areas in order to perform effectively as a product manager. This is especially true when you lead a product team. And, not surprising, as you grow as a product manager you will lead one.

Every business depends on customers. And what customers buy — or choose to use — is your product. The product is the result of what the product team builds, and the product manager is responsible for what the product team will build.

To further quote Cagan’s book, Inspired, a product manager is accountable for the success of the product. And, that accountability comes with a wide range of responsibilities.

No wonder this discipline comes with a lot of expectations, hence a long and dynamic list of requirements. To the very least, we should all be in agreement that it is not as vaguely simple as this job inquiry. :)

I thought it’d be useful to frame the scope of responsibilities of Product Management into this diagram. As oversimplified as it may look, it represents a glimpse of reality we face as a Product Management practitioner. As I certainly did during my time as one.

• Why — Owning your product vision and narrative. The very reason why you’re building the product
• Who — Managing expectations of your audience or stakeholders. Business, engineers, marketers, and users
• What — Building the product
• How — Practicing your skills to work with respective stakeholders to bring your vision closer to a reality. Essentially, connecting the ‘why’ and ‘who’ above

Next, let’s dive deeper into each.

Why

Your product vision and narrative belong to this space. Many good articles have been written about the importance of creating a narrative. In fact, you could also think of your narrative as a product.

Who

In this commonly referenced diagram, a Product Manager is expected to bridge the three vertexes: business, technology, and user. A Product Manager essentially must be able to find her way to work effectively with a variety of people: business owners, engineers, marketers, sales, and so on. These multitude of stakeholders constitute the ‘who’ of Product Management.

What

The final deliverable: your product.

How

It is in this layer that your skills are put into real test. How do you bring the product narrative into life as a real product? How do you influence and convince your team members — designers, engineers, and other product managers — to believe that you’re in the quest of building a right solution; and if you’re lucky, for the right problem?

You shall aim to grow your Product group into a team of missionaries, not mercenaries. Mercenaries build whatever they’re told to build. Missionaries are true believers in the vision and are committed to solving problems for their customers. To make someone from simply a doer (mercenary) into a problem solver and solution owner (missionary) requires a lot of influencing.

A lot of items in this ‘how’ box. And, the scope is not static. This is not a surprise due to the very expectation for a Product person to “fill white space.” That is, to fill in a role (i.e. to prototype a job function) until the company makes a full time hire. For example, when a technical support person is needed to accommodate the company growth, a Product Manager will step in to fill in that gap. Because it is her responsibility to identify a critical gap around her product and then roll up her sleeves to close it: a tall order to maintain the continuity of value delivery. The ‘how’ (in this case, as a technical support person) is now also your responsibility.

If you need a list of skills required to be good in doing this ‘how’, this article is a good start. From understanding kanban and scrum to adapting UX research in an agile environment, there is no shortage of things to learn how to influence and convince each and every person in the company to support your product narrative.

Different Box Sizes

Your box sizes might differ depending on your product team composition and specific situation. In one company, you could be required to spend a lot of time in managing expectation. Another, you might have to focus on communicating your narrative since there had been a recent major reorganization in your company.

Summary

It is useful to understand all the necessary Product Management skills are, at the end of the day, for enabling connection and collaboration. Your deep knowledge of data, design, technology, customer, and market are necessary to bridge and connect those various stakeholders. And, how useful that knowledge can be utilized depends on how masterful you’re as a storyteller.

In the next article, we’ll explore how the same diagram above can be reused to explain the scope of responsibilities of People Ops or Human Capital discipline. And, to consider Product-minded individuals as your ally in building People Ops to be a reliable business strategic partner for your company. After all, there is this gap between Product Management and People Ops, which when properly addressed together will help employees find meaning in their shared time building a great product.