10 ms·

Things product managers waste their time on

22 points by popcorn49 9y ago

mikekchar 9y ago
I'm going to admit that I'm ridiculously biased on this topic, which is terrible since I've never been a PM :-) While I don't disagree with anything in this article, it falls a bit flat for me because it doesn't say anything that you should do. Here's my list of things you should do as a PM: - Understand your product. Not just conceptually. Not just how it fits in the market. Not just what we used to call the "box features" (features you write down on the box in shrinkwrapped software so people will buy it). You need to understand what the product does in detail. You need to understand how it does it in detail. You need to understand exactly how to do every single thing with the software. You should be an expert -- more than the programmers, more than the QA, more than the users. You should know what's great, what sucks and what's in between. - You need to prioritise the incoming work. By this I don't mean "X is priority 1. Y is priority 1. Z is priority 1. ZZ is priority 2". Ordinal priority. If anyone asks about 2 pieces of work, A and B, you should be able to say which one is more important and why. You should produce reports that are visible and understandable that document these priorities so that everybody can see them. - You need to plan the upcoming work. This is different than prioritisation. To plan the upcoming work you need to break larger goals down into smaller vertical pieces, each of which give you some value. You should then be able to arrange these in an order (again ordinal -- none of this "these 500 things all need to be done at the same time"). To do this, you will need to work with a variety of different people because you won't have all the information to do it by yourself. - You need to ensure that acceptance criteria is available before development for something starts. You do not have to furnish this acceptance criteria yourself, but you must be able to understand it and to judge critically if it is sufficient. - You need to track development and produce reports. You should be able to say that something is not yet started, but planned to be started in a specified time frame. You should be able to say that something has started development. You should be able to say that something is done (and not just it-compiles-done: done-done-like-we-are-going-to-ship-it-tomorrow-done.) You need to produce reports that are highly visible by anyone that shows this status. - You need to be active in promoting process that shortens the timescale from feature request to done-done. Likewise you need to be active in making the movement of work from request to shipping more and more visible to all parties. - You need to handle political problems between the various groups that have a stake in development. Do not delegate this. As far as I can tell, that's it. Not that it isn't a hellishly difficult job with just the above. As the article suggests, don't waste your time doing things other than this -- you don't have time! I've had the good fortune of working with a handful of amazingly good PM's in my day. It's not easy, but try to be one of the good ones (they are exceptionally rare)!
- natecavanaugh 9y ago
  This sounds a bit like a conflation between Product Managers and Project Management. Both roles can juggle as needed on the size of the organization, but I imagine ProdMan positions to be interfacing with consumers needs and the trends and gathering feedback on new and existing lines of work. I think one critical skill a ProdMon is to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, and prioritizing actually solutions to people's problems and not just ticking down feature lost from some analyst who's like 6 steps away from the day to day pain of the people. A million small evolutions will change the world and take everyone by surprise :)
  - dozzie 9y ago
    > This sounds a bit like a conflation between Product Managers and Project Management. And what's the significant difference between these two titles? I can invent half a dozen more pro-something manager titles by myself, which doesn't mean they will be in any way useful.
    - BerislavLopac 9y ago
      In a nutshell, a project manager is the one responsible for managing time and resources on a project. On the other hand, a product manager is responsible for features of a product, especially when they should be introduced and what the team should focus on. Basically, a product manager needs to balance between different stakeholders of a product -- usually the users, development team, marketing and sales, although that list will be different for each product -- and take responsible for any decisions about the product development.
      - dozzie 9y ago
        And how exactly does this "managing time and resources on a project" look like if a project manager according to such definition doesn't decide what needs to be done? What such project manager actually can do?
        9y ago

22 points by popcorn49 9y ago

I'm going to admit that I'm ridiculously biased on this topic, which is terrible since I've never been a PM :-) While I don't disagree with anything in this article, it falls a bit flat for me because it doesn't say anything that you should do. Here's my list of things you should do as a PM: - Understand your product. Not just conceptually. Not just how it fits in the market. Not just what we used to call the "box features" (features you write down on the box in shrinkwrapped software so people will buy it). You need to understand what the product does in detail. You need to understand how it does it in detail. You need to understand exactly how to do every single thing with the software. You should be an expert -- more than the programmers, more than the QA, more than the users. You should know what's great, what sucks and what's in between. - You need to prioritise the incoming work. By this I don't mean "X is priority 1. Y is priority 1. Z is priority 1. ZZ is priority 2". Ordinal priority. If anyone asks about 2 pieces of work, A and B, you should be able to say which one is more important and why. You should produce reports that are visible and understandable that document these priorities so that everybody can see them. - You need to plan the upcoming work. This is different than prioritisation. To plan the upcoming work you need to break larger goals down into smaller vertical pieces, each of which give you some value. You should then be able to arrange these in an order (again ordinal -- none of this "these 500 things all need to be done at the same time"). To do this, you will need to work with a variety of different people because you won't have all the information to do it by yourself. - You need to ensure that acceptance criteria is available before development for something starts. You do not have to furnish this acceptance criteria yourself, but you must be able to understand it and to judge critically if it is sufficient. - You need to track development and produce reports. You should be able to say that something is not yet started, but planned to be started in a specified time frame. You should be able to say that something has started development. You should be able to say that something is done (and not just it-compiles-done: done-done-like-we-are-going-to-ship-it-tomorrow-done.) You need to produce reports that are highly visible by anyone that shows this status. - You need to be active in promoting process that shortens the timescale from feature request to done-done. Likewise you need to be active in making the movement of work from request to shipping more and more visible to all parties. - You need to handle political problems between the various groups that have a stake in development. Do not delegate this. As far as I can tell, that's it. Not that it isn't a hellishly difficult job with just the above. As the article suggests, don't waste your time doing things other than this -- you don't have time! I've had the good fortune of working with a handful of amazingly good PM's in my day. It's not easy, but try to be one of the good ones (they are exceptionally rare)!

natecavanaugh 9y ago
This sounds a bit like a conflation between Product Managers and Project Management. Both roles can juggle as needed on the size of the organization, but I imagine ProdMan positions to be interfacing with consumers needs and the trends and gathering feedback on new and existing lines of work. I think one critical skill a ProdMon is to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, and prioritizing actually solutions to people's problems and not just ticking down feature lost from some analyst who's like 6 steps away from the day to day pain of the people. A million small evolutions will change the world and take everyone by surprise :)
- dozzie 9y ago
  > This sounds a bit like a conflation between Product Managers and Project Management. And what's the significant difference between these two titles? I can invent half a dozen more pro-something manager titles by myself, which doesn't mean they will be in any way useful.
  - BerislavLopac 9y ago
    In a nutshell, a project manager is the one responsible for managing time and resources on a project. On the other hand, a product manager is responsible for features of a product, especially when they should be introduced and what the team should focus on. Basically, a product manager needs to balance between different stakeholders of a product -- usually the users, development team, marketing and sales, although that list will be different for each product -- and take responsible for any decisions about the product development.
    - dozzie 9y ago
      And how exactly does this "managing time and resources on a project" look like if a project manager according to such definition doesn't decide what needs to be done? What such project manager actually can do?
      - 9y ago