The Role of a Product Manager

Distinguishing Characteristics of a PM

The depiction of a product manager in this book chapter aligns mostly with what I imagined a PM to be. Though Lemay focuses on the responsibilities of a PM rather than the nomenclature of the job title, I think what he describes is encapsulated by the “manager” part of being a PM.

Many of the recommendations he mentions in his checklist at the end traits of any good manager, not necessarily just a PM and I found that after reading the chapter, I could omit the adjective “product” from much of what he wrote, and his advice would still apply broadly to all managers involved in business development.

I am sure that the rest of the book dives deeper into the distinguishing characteristics of practical product management as opposed to general management, but nonetheless a question I have for him is “What makes product management unique (-ly challenging) compared to other managers of cross-functional teams?”

Adaptability, Workload and Time Management

Another thing that stuck out to me is his description of the versatility PMs are expected to possess. He states that PMs are the ones who shoulder all the responsibility for the development and delivery of a product, that depending on what type of organization they are a part of, they may have to juggle other roles like UX design, HR leads, etc. He then further asserts that PMs are also not actually building the product themselves and that they also don’t have to work 60 hours a week to be effective.

This makes me curious about how PMs strike a balance between offering support to a given team by being adaptable enough to fit into any responsibility and not micromanaging or overworking themselves. If we reference the average employee’s day-to-day work life, we often hear stuff like “meetings that could’ve been an email,” unrealistic expectations from higher-ups, poor communication, etc. This all adds up to giving me the impression that many things could go wrong during product development. Therefore, I would also like to ask: “How do skillful PMs concretely filter through all the noise and accomplish all their responsibilities without overworking themselves with long hours?”

There is also the opposite problem: there could be a sizeable amount of deadtime where PMs have to wait for the deliverables of a given team to proceed or are expected to be present but are unable to realistically act on any of the responsibilities of different teams. To that, I ask, “What do PMs do when there are no immediate fires they can put out?”