The Basics of Software Product Management Are Still Not Well-understood

In our digital world. In 2023. It still floors me that there are not more product managers in the world, and that it needs to be better understood what the value or responsibilities are for such a role. It's not just the glue. It's the driver of the initiative while everyone else is off doing their day job.

Everyone understands what a business leader is responsible for—specific metrics, revenue, etc. Everyone understands you can only write code with software engineers. Few still understand how to connect various departments on an initiative that involves people, processes, and technology working together.

Here are a few symptoms you are missing a function in your business:

- After all, once the engineer ships the code, now what?

- If the business can't use the feature, now what?

- If the engineer doesn't want to do it, now what?

- If the business can't get someone to care about their issues, now what?

- If this amazing promised feature the company has worked on for 6 months needs more tweaking, now what?

- If the engineer wants to build another sandcastle in the sky, where is the buy/build/partner analysis?

- Which projects should we work on and why to hit these Board goals?

-If the business doesn't understand what projects are being worked on right now and in 6 months, now what?

-If your Customer Service organization was surprised by a new feature that just shipped, or something new that broke, now what?

- If the business doesn't understand why "everything happens so slowly" now what?

All this is the domain of product management. This is not a function that AI can replace. Like, ever.

Some basic principles of excellent product management:

1 - No surprises, ever. Visibility above all.

2 - Stakeholders feel heard.

3 - Persistence is more important than perfection.

4 - Disappointing someone very early is much better than disappointing someone later.

5 - Don't lose track of ideas.

6 - Get great at "back of the napkin" impact analysis.

7 - Understand where each project fits in the (short) list of the company's top priorities.

8 - Protect the engineers from distractions.

In fact, for most companies -- if you have an Engineering team that you think is "not delivering fast enough" or ineffective, the missing component is simple.

Product Management