How I See a Product Manager’s Job
After reading the preface and chapter 1 of LeMay’s “Product Management in Practice” I definitely have a newfound appreciation and understanding of a PM. Coming into this class, I definitely thought of a PM as a more boss-like director type person, but after reading the assigned readings it’s much less of that and as the reading said a “high responsibility low authority” role. Another thing I learned that contradicted what I used to think, is that a PM is not responsible for building the product itself. Instead, a PM is responsible for creating clarity and alignment between all the people who do build and engage with the product – engineers, designers, executives, and even customers. I was also struck by this idea that PMs exist in this state of ambiguity: they are asked to make sense of incomplete information, competing priorities, and conflicting stakeholder goals. In this way, they serve as a translator, making sure everyone working on a product is working in their own unique way towards the same shared vision that they approach from different perspectives, each of which the PM is responsible for understanding.
Questions for LeMay
- You described a PM’s responsibilities as very broad and ambiguous, and you also indicated that engineers hate it when you do their job for them. So I was curious where the boundary is for when to step in if something is behind schedule or under resourced? So essentially, what makes it clear that it is time for a PM to step in, and on the other hand, what makes it interfering/ micromanaging?
- Given the indirect nature of the role while also knowing that a PM is responsible for everything with respect to the product’s success, how can you assess your own performance as a PM? How do you know where things went wrong if your product wasn’t as successful as you wanted, and if it succeeds, do you just assume you did a good job? How do you know how to improve? Do you just have to rely on your boss to let you know?
- What were the harder lessons you had to learn through experience that you wish you knew earlier in your PM journey?
