As I talk with a lot of startups is the idea of when (or whether) a product manager is necessary keeps coming up. When I talk to big companies, I find that I need to ask how the role of Product Manager is defined in that company, because the responsibilities vary widely.

What kind of job is it, if it changes from company to company? Or if it’s not clear whether it’s even a job at all?

Simply put, it’s not a single job. And the emphasis of it changes over the maturity lifecycle of the company and the product.

The function that a product manager fills is that of the person who can navigate teams toward a positive product outcome. In smaller startups, the founder is usually that person. They own the product vision, they understand how the product strategy fits into the company strategy, and (most importantly) they have the bandwidth to make informed detailed decisions when lack of clarity requires a decision to be made. 

As a company grows, the product grows, the data about how the product is being used grows and the number of internal voices about what should be done next grows. So, the work of getting to a positive product outcome grows.

A product manager does the following:

• understand the customer need* and be able to articulate that need to all internal stakeholders (and ensure that there are enough customers)

• define a product that meets the needs of the customers, including understanding how the UX helps to achieve that

• communicate the rationale for why, when and how a particular product or feature is being built both inside the company and to the customers (i.e, build a roadmap)

• define “success” and “done” — that is being able to define which numbers will give you an accurate understanding of whether or not you achieved your objective and being able to read the story in the numbers

• define (at a minimum understand) the product strategy and understand the company strategy**, be able to articulate how the work feeds into both

• understand the technical capabilities of his/her company (and ensure that what the company can build can achieve the needs of the market)

• understand and articulate the external environment that drives the timelines 

• articulate the future vision of the product and work with engineering and design to ensure that each release brings you toward that state and provides the right type of flexibility for discovery

• be able to understand the value of the product to the customer and how and when the product will be monetized

• ensure that the product aligns to the distribution channel***

• balance the needs of the customer with the needs of the company with the needs of the technology

* Implicit in all of this is that the product manager (and the company), understand who the customer is.

**No, the company strategy is not the product strategy, even when you’re in startup mode. Blogpost on that coming soon.

*** Distribution channel? Isn’t the internet the distribution channel? No. But I’ll cover that in a different blog post.

The Swiss-army-knife-wielding ninja

Simple, right?

I mean, you just need a person who understands strategy, design, engineering, analytics, customer research, marketing, QA. 

What you need isn’t a Swiss-Army Knife. It’s a ninja with a Swiss Army knife. 

Sometimes, you may feel you need an army. But what you really need is good seargants. 

The smaller the company, the more the product manager needs to be able to DO. Their job is to fill any holes in order to make sure that the thing that is being built meets the customer need. As the company grows, the product manager’s main job is to ensure that the things are done in concert. Building the interfaces between teams, knowing that the work that needs to be done is being done in alignment mean that the PM needs to be a people person. It’s not only about understanding the needs of your customers, it’s about understanding the strengths of your team.  

Ultimately, the PM needs to get the best outcome from the skills available to them. And where a whole skill set is missing, they need to adapt. Either ensure the company knows they need to hire for it or find a way to manage it otherwise (usually both.) 

As the company grows, they will add more products, more features, more PMs. The PMs need to be able to fill a role within their delivery team, but also you want to look for complimentary skills across your PM team. 

As the company grows further, the product discipline starts to become striated as the product managers hire in to compensate for their own areas of weakness. Hence, you see a separation of project management (keeping track of schedules and coordinating teams), technical product management (ensuring that the requirements are written to the specifications of the system), product marketing (understanding competitive positioning and bringing products to market) and business analyst (determining the operational flow).

Makes sense, right? Well . . .

In the above model, who has accountability for making sure that the customer is getting their needs filled? Project and Technical Product Managers tend to become internally oriented — solving the company’s problem rather than the customers. Business analysts are rarely held accountable for customer satisfaction. Product marketing doesn’t have the ability to determine what product actually gets produced and when, and becomes separated from the reality of delivery.

So, on the one hand you have a job too big for one person. On the other, you have problems when multiple people do it. What’s the solve?

Most importantly, each company needs to define what the expectations are for Product Management is for that company. In its simplest terms, Product Management is responsible for the scope and the priorities, Project Management is responsible for the schedules and Product Marketing is responsible for the go to market execution. But the role that Product Management plays in coordinating all of these pieces is important to be defined. Organizational alignment is key to ensuring that incentives are aligned and that information flows correctly. 

Fundamentally, as a PM your job is about communication. Communicating the customer need to the delivery team and the way that need is being met to the go-to-market teams. 

As a product manager, your job is to ensure that you understand the what is expected of your role. Beyond that, the most important thing for you to do is to listen and learn. Product managers must understand all of the aspects of the job — from engineering to analytics from marketing to support from strategy to finance — you must have a basic understanding of what your stakeholders care about. Understanding breeds empathy, empathy breeds willingness to communicate.