As someone who has limited product management experience prior to coming this class, I recognized how different a product manager role may be from the ideal and what the role truly entails in reality after reading the Preface and Chapter 1 of “Product Management in Practice”.
Product Management in practice not only differentiates a lot from product management in theory, but also from team to team and from company to company. I realize that my past understanding of product management often includes building a product from the ground up but product management in reality often means fighting for incremental improvements.
Nonetheless, product management is definitely a connective role that requires cross-functional communication and stakeholder management skills. The specific characteristic of the role is also the main motivation behind why I want to become a product manager as it bridges the gap between users and the company as well as vision and execution although this often also means that a product manager has to wear different hats and do lots of different things at once.
Question for the author: You mentioned in the book how product managers are much more likely to share “war stories” than “best practices” or “mistakes” than “successes”. Do you have a particular memorable war story or mistake that you can share to the class?
