“Success is just a never-ending process of getting better and better at whatever you are trying to achieve.”
– John Traver, Co-Founder and CTO of Frame.io

A question often asked today is “how do you define the role of the product manager in today’s application-driven economy?” Consider this. In most startups, the CEO or CTO in all likelihood also plays the role of product manager. Even in established organizations, where does the manager belong? Marketing or Design or Development; because it looks like he’s wearing all those hats. In fact, some even argue that management may be a part-time role for someone in these areas or for senior management itself.

Let’s try to look at product management in three aspects.

1. What does the role entail and what does it take to be successful there? This can help someone make the biggest career change or start a new one; or for that matter help you evaluate the right candidate.

2. What is your role in agile development, given the critical role a manager can play here?

3. Can product management be outsourced, as this decision can affect time to market, quality, competitiveness, and profitability like no other?

What does the role of product management imply?

Laurence Bradford writes in the Forbes article, 8 Tips to Land Your First Product Manager Role, writes: “The role is at the intersection of business, technology and design, combining strategy, marketing, leadership and other skills with the goal end of launching an amazing product. “

One thing is given: the importance and breadth of the role of the product manager. The current complexity of the business and technology landscape, as well as the constant rotation of an organization’s product portfolio, require a more active role for the manager. The basic minimums of the role include:

1. Understand the vision of product management and communicate it effectively to design, development, test and marketing teams (in their own languages).

2. Carry out market studies, technology studies and an analysis of the company’s own business model to validate the idea of ​​the product, determine its set of characteristics and the development roadmap.

3. Drive the development of the product through its various stages, working with various teams, to meet customer requirements, deadlines, and quality and safety standards.

4. Establish an environment of seamless collaboration between different teams to meet, as Bradford says, the end of an amazing product launch.

Depending on the character of the organization and the way an organization defines its scope, the role may lean more towards Technology or Marketing. While that’s a moot point, the requirement that the manager know and speak the language of both marketing and technology is a given.

From a skills perspective, whether you come from a management or engineering background, to be a successful manager in today’s development scenario, you must have: (a) a strong understanding of programming with the ability to code yourself, (b) UX design experience, and (c) analytical thinking and problem solving skills, in addition to more generic management skills such as negotiation, communication, documentation, time management, delegation, stakeholder management, and leadership.

The role of the product manager in agile development

The manager role becomes even more exciting and challenging in an agile environment. Yes, we call it an environment, because organizations are increasingly embracing ‘agile’ as a culture, not just a strategy for a particular product or project. In this environment, the characteristics of a product or even the product itself are in a perpetual dynamic state. Unlike traditional management, which moves through a linear roadmap with critical paths, in an agile environment, product management takes an iterative approach to development with regular feedback intervals. And these iterations should allow the user to interact with the product during development.

Although the most popular agile development system, Scrum, creates a new role: Product Owner, some organizations have merged the Product Owner and Product Manager roles into one role and some have used these two names interchangeably. But the fact is that the role of the manager has become more intense, both on the development side (sustainable development) where sponsors, developers and users must be able to maintain a constant rhythm indefinitely; along with continued attention to technical excellence. and good design) and marketing (value creation, where time, features, and roadmap are tested and calibrated based on customer feedback and research).

Writing about how product management must change to enable the agile enterprise, as early as 2009, Catherine Conner had these four practical tips for adapting product management to agile needs:

1. Stop doing work that does not provide real value to the customer, directly or indirectly, and communicate what you will stop doing.

2. Encourage live interaction over extensive documentation, whether you describe a business case to executives or document requirements.

3. Practice ruthless ranking, whether it’s prioritizing requirements, business goals, or your daily activities, assign real priority numbers.

4. Accept change as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Can product management be outsourced?

There is a strong argument against outsourcing product management – saying the function is too strategic and comprehensive to be left to experts outside of your control. It has its merits. But, as Roman Pavlyuk correctly describes on his SalesForce blog, there are five compelling reasons to outsource any technology service, which also holds true for product management.

1. Reduce operating costs

2. Improve business focus

3. Gain access to world-class capabilities

4. Free internal resources for other purposes

5. Touch resources that are not available internally

The question is not “Can product management be outsourced?” Rather, it’s more about ‘whether to outsource product management; and if so, how?