Why the Best Product Management is More Art than Science
When most people think of the ‘art’ in product management they think of the intuition or ‘product sense’ that is often invoked by many to justify a product decision. And while that certainly is an important part of it, as I’ve gotten more senior in my career I’ve realized that the ‘art’ goes far beyond that in ways that are sublime and that often go unnoticed.
The ‘art’ of product management can be observed when a PM chooses how to weigh the various variables of a roadmap prioritization criteria. For example, should we favor investments that customers prioritized more highly during interactions or the ones that offer the largest estimated total addressable market? What relative weight should be given to each of these factors? There is no single right answer, which is why this is art. It can be observed when choosing between two comparable potential user segments and strategically deciding which one to serve first. It also makes an appearance when a PM decides they have enough confidence in a plan and that their organization can live with the remaining risks and unknowns during execution — it is the art we are leveraging when making the implicit decision that we’ve talked to enough users, looked up enough data points or incorporated enough diverse perspectives.
The ‘science’ of product management is qualitative and quantitative data — usually obtained through customer interactions or product usage data. A PM would be reckless to ignore or undervalue the science altogether. The science needs to back the art: data can give teams the confidence they are probably targeting a worthwhile opportunity.
As an analogy, if you think of business opportunities as mountains, science in product management enables teams and organizations to make sure they are climbing tall mountains, but it is the art of product management that usually picks what mountain ranges an organization is even considering.
Science can help teams identify the local maximum of opportunities but it is the art of PMing that acts as a compass towards the global maxima. Data scientists can inform teams what movement in product metrics might lead to a desirable business outcome and user research can qualify the desirability or magnitude of customer painpoints but only the ‘art’ of product management can decide what business outcome, from the few reasonable ones that remain after ‘the cut from science’, the organization should be prioritizing next (should we continue to prioritize retention here or move towards new user growth?) . Science presents teams with great options, but the art is in picking which one to go after. Art is what ultimately gets used when picking the ‘oranges over the apples’ in a conversation about trade-offs of different currencies.
Science would have told the founders of Uber or potential backers how big the market for black cars was, but it would have taken an eye for the art to make a bet that the existence of such technology would have ultimately enabled many people to become drivers and multiply the size of that pie over and over and over again. Great decisions powered by the ‘art of product management’ can only be recognized in retrospect. At the time of making them, if one could have predicted the quality of that ‘intuition powered’ decision it was likely a decision made by science.
The biggest gains from PMing come from great art, but science is the tool that limits the downside of making the wrong decision. You can become a good PM by using science, but the best PMs will be the best artists.
Want to hone your ‘art side of Product Management?’ Like this article and if I get to 100 Likes I will do a follow-up post on getting better at the ‘Art of Product Management’.
