Product managers product managing product management
There are a only a very few roles within an organisation where the skills of that role enable the holder to apply them to the role. People who work in HR or Finance can’t apply the thinking of their specialisms to how their role works in an organisation. Of course, it’s beneficial for all roles or teams to appreciate what problem they solve for their organisation, but very few of them get to shape how they solve that problem. The role they play is well shaped and clearly defined. Maybe we could expect Sales people to sell their role within an organisation, and maybe we could expect Designers to design how their role fits in the organisation. And maybe Product manager can product manage their role in an organisation.
They can attempt to understand the problems the organisation is trying to solve by having product managers and shape how their role solves that problem. Is essence, the role becomes a product that enables a value exchange between the product manager or product team and the organisation.
I wonder if product teams that take a product management approach to how they operate within the organisation might be more successful. Rather than adopting a fixed approach they can set hypotheses about what might work better and then run experiments to prove or disprove it. They can use prototype processes to test and validate ideas about how to work. And once they have a process that looks promising, iterate on it as the working environment changes.
Product managers should product manage product management.
What’s the difference between product manager, project manager and delivery manager?
Product manager, project manager and delivery manager each play a different role on a modern agile development team, but share a focus on achieving the outcome of the work.
What do product managers do?
Product managers focus on:
- Vision – Understand the problems the product aims to solve, who has those problems, and why they are worth solving.
- Strategy – Present how the product will solve the problem, and how solving the problems will achieve organisational objectives and meet user needs.
- Alignment – Ensure the product vision and strategy are aligned with organisational objectives and stakeholders expectations, and that the team are aligned on the problem and the solution.
- Prioritisation – Decide which the parts of the solution achieve the most for the organisation and the users.
- Value – Understand the value users will get from using the product and where they might lack value they expect.
- Cost – Balance the cost of building the product with the expected return on investment over the life time of the product.
What do project managers do?
Project managers focus on:
- Planning – Coordinate all aspects of the project to meet the project goals.
- Cost – Monitor and report on the cost of the project.
- Time – Understand the schedule of work and monitor progress.
- Governance – Ensure the project follows organisational control procedures.
- Resourcing & dependencies – Monitor project resources and escalate dependencies.
- Risks & issues – Monitor and resolve risks and issues that may impact the success of the project.
What do delivery managers do?
Delivery managers focus on:
- Time – Decide how the development team best uses the time available.
- Value – Understand what value the user should get from the product.
- Scope – Control the scope of work that the development team work on the ensure the solution is appropriate and proportional to the problem.
- Quality – Ensure the solution meets quality standards, e.g. accessibility and security.
- Barriers – Remove barriers and impediments that slow down the development team.
- Process – Implement, monitor and improve the processes the team uses to manage it’s work.
How do all three work together?
All three overlap with a focus on the outcome. All three roles succeed if the work achieves the outcome it set out to.
The Project Manager and Delivery Manager overlap their focus on time. For the Project Manager
The Product Manager and Project Manager overlap their focus on cost. This includes all investments into the project and product to ensure a positive return is going to be achieved.
The Delivery Manager and the Product Manager share a focus on the value that end user of the solution will receive. For the Delivery Manager, value is closely connected to scope of the work as defining and building the wrong product or feature risks reducing the value it provides.
Although each role has different aspects to focus on, good teams don’t work in isolation and support each other to succeed.
Using the ‘S’ word: What we mean when we talk about scaling
I hear people talk about scaling products and services and I wonder if we all understand what scaling means in the same way.
The word ‘scaling’ has a lot of baggage within the tech world, from implying an end goal of millions of users to , but used on it’s own is as meaningless as it is loaded.
‘To scale’ only makes sense if its actually phrased ‘to scale by a factor of x’. So, if x equals 2 then the exponential growth goes: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc. This is a very different growth pattern from how many products and services actually grow.
If we expect a product or service to grow linearly, that it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., then there might be less ambiguity by talking more accurately about it as linear growth and avoiding any confusion from using the ‘s’ word.
The Biggest Mistakes…
We’ll take a look at some useful mental models for startups, product and leadership.