The Scope of a Product Manager
Lemay describes the job of a product manager to be a bridge between multiple teams, connecting design and engineering teams towards business goals as well as the overall formation of the product. They are people who derive impact from influence–they have strong communication, collaboration, and problem solving skills. They can fill up niches that require support and oversee the product’s life cycle in its design.
The job itself is very ambiguous, with various hats to wear depending on the role and company culture that you work at. But in general, product managers should expect to prioritize work tasks, address team misalignments, and help clarify and define metrics for success.
Product managers can take a variety of roles across different backgrounds. In some companies such as Amazon, they are recruited to have expertise in business. In Google, product managers are typically former software engineers and have a technical background. They are a jack-of-all-trades whose general expertise allows for flexibility in their roles and to support in any way that they can.
Lemay specifies that quality product managers evaluate themselves on the impact of their teams’ achievements, as they act as an agent that facilitates interactions around their teams. They are not over workers or micromanagers, and should be generally liked and facilitate a good working environment for their team.
In the words of Christina Wodotke, product managers do everything. Their responsibilities are anything that the product requires or is lacking. That’s working with the designers, picking up on the engineering side, supporting the team in anything and everything related to environment and product.
Questions for Lemay
- Lemay talks about how insecurity can lead to poor product manager archetypes, such as Overachiever or Product Martyr. How can future product managers try to develop their own confidence in their roles instead of becoming these archetypes?
- Lemay talks about product managers should clarify expectations in their roles, as their roles often overlap with other roles (e.g. product owner, program manager). How should product managers proactively clarify their responsibilities and expectations without encroaching or confusing their own roles?
- There is a strong focus that program managers are good communicators and collaborators, and are often responsible in cultivating good team culture and dynamics. What are some techniques or approaches that product managers should adopt to mediate conflicts and communicate properly without formal authority?
- The product manager wears a lot of hats. How can they develop these skills to be supportive in a variety of fields, where each hat can be its own respective job and have a strong set of qualifications?
- LeMay discusses how product managers have less authority but a lot of responsibility. Then, who has the authority?
- Between all of the fields, who has the ultimate say in the design and engineering of the product?
- Are product managers interested in the overall success of the product or are they interested in maintaining proper communication and collaboration between groups?
- Even still, between the idea of iterating and revising product management for future product development, who evaluates product managers themselves?
