Much like a people manager manages people, a product manager manages their product…by managing the people who define and build it. A product manager is responsible for shaping a product that realizes the mission of their organization and that product is formed by ensuring that the work of the team that builds it is both meaningful and effective.
Specifically, a product manager ensures that the work of designers, engineers, and anyone else stepping into their area of ownership has meaning relative to the objectives of the larger organization. Perfectly realized, a product manager ensures that every minute of their team allotted time on a project is spent aligned with and in service of furthering larger organizational goals. To this end, they spend their time managing upwards to define these goals before collaboratively prioritizing, defining, and scoping the user and internal problems that a product should solve in order to achieve them. They also weigh competing goals, and conflicting opinions, like constraining resources and creating value to drive towards the larger mission. Tactically, product managers set just the right amount of this context for their teams so that they can make informed product decisions.
Much like product designers or engineers, product managers are generative–they create meaning and value where none existed before. However, their medium is people–they are responsible for orchestrating the invisible, magnetic pull that joins the work of others in a cohesive, purposeful structure.
Questions:
- Is anyone on an EPD team not a product manager?
- When you carry so much responsibility, own so many aspects of the product life cycle, and are beholden to so many stakeholders how do you get anything done? How do you prioritize work and validate that prioritization?
