Products Are Hard

A few years ago, as I prepared to leave a product manager position, I trained a junior member of the team, someone new to the role of product management, as my replacement. I told him the role comes down to the following five elements.

Gather

A huge part of product management is simply knowing what’s going on — what people do all day as it relates to the product, what kinds of things they wish they could change, and how the various constituencies interact. While most product managers have plenty of good ideas on how to improve the product, gathering ideas from and identifying problems in the rest of the organization are just as important.

Synthesize

As ideas and issues emerge, a product manager must create connections where others do not see them. Two groups in an organization may have two very different problems. A product manager should be able to find a way to make a single, better-abstracted view of the underlying concern. Synthesizing also involves creating named themes, initiatives, and goals for a product. Never underestimate the power of synthesis to create common understanding and bring sanity to the chaos of “line item” requests. Synthesis is also instrumental in winning the hearts of product team members.

Prioritize

Choosing what is most important is an art. Deep understanding of business strategy, market realities, and resource capabilities is key. Knowing what’s hard vs. what’s easy and what’s of broad vs. narrow value helps to create a prioritized list of the various tasks to be completed. Given infinite time and infinite resources everything would be possible, but in the real world, making the hard choices (or, more importantly, helping the rest of the organization make the hard choices) becomes one of the central functions of a good product manager.

Define

A product manager must own the detailed definition of what the product should do so that engineering knows what they will build. This involves plenty of documentation, though much less than you probably think. Document only as much as you have to. Don’t create detail for detail’s sake. With web-based software the need to be quick and iterate frequently makes it essential to move forward with imperfect information and adjust as you go. If you’ve been an engineer or worked closely with engineers, you know the unique horrors of changing the spec and the dread of feature-creep. Part of the reason for the rise of agile methods is that rather than constantly reacting to attempts to get to a “finished” spec of a project (only to see that spec change in the middle of the cycle) engineers started to simply build the dynamic nature of requirements into the system. “Define” does not always mean writing down as much as being the Source of Truth.

Shepherd

A big part of my day as a product manager involves, quite literally, walking around the building. Keeping all of the balls in the air is a critical part of product management. In most organizations there is nobody else who sees all the various pieces and how they must fit together. Many product efforts require coordinating distributed efforts towards a single destination (and doing that over and over again). In my world, having the engineering “done” is only about 2/3 of the process. Once the actual “product” is at a finished state, packaging, documenting, training, and distributing all remain.

When I first put these 5 elements on a white board I wrote the word “CONTEXT” next to them. Ultimately, you must undertake all of these activities with a full appreciation for the business as a whole — the goals, strategies, capabilities, culture, and, most importantly, the people.

Product is a curious function. It is often under-appreciated, yet it is also the domain of some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley. Product people must be generalists while also obsessing about small details. They must cross cultures within their organizations. They must be able to step outside the organization and sit on the same side of the table as the people for whom the product is made. It’s a hard, rewarding job and it’s the glue that holds many great organizations together.

[For more product wisdom from a host of thinkers and luminaries, join us at the Products Are Hard 2013 conference. Register now.]