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> Very few engineers want to maintain relationships with customers That’s what CX is for. > interview users to identify potential features That’s what design

> Very few engineers want to maintain relationships with customers That’s what CX is for. > interview users to identify potential features That’s what designers are for. > manage leadership, play politics for resource allocation That’s what your lead/people manager is for. You don’t need a PM. You need an org chart.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
This might make sense for a company with one product, but for a larger company with many products, there's a lot of benefit in having one person per product who understands their product deeply, and can put on any of these hats when required to make the product better.
- ryanSrich 3y ago
  Seems like you’d have a lot of overlap if what the PM is doing are the activities I listed, and you also employ the people I listed. Also, what engineer doesn’t understand the product deeply from both a technical and business perspective? Maybe a contract dev, or a new hire.
  - ako 3y ago
    It’s about responsibility, the PM is responsible for the success of a product. To achieve this he collaborates with all the parties you mention, but in the end the PM has the responsibility. Key in this is bringing together knowledge of the market, the competitors, the customer problems, the value of a solution to these customers, determining a roadmap that will lead towards a successful product, coordinate launch, service, support, and continuous monitoring of the state of the product (does it have the right features, what is the competition doing, what does sales need to effectively sell the product, etc). Reforge provides good training for product managers. This article provides a good overview of a role of a PM: https://www.reforge.com/previews/product/what-does-a-product-manager-do# https://www.reforge.com/previews/product/what-does-a-product...
    - sarchertech 3y ago
      Having one product owner is fine. The problem is that it should be a role someone moves into from one of the disciplines involved. Design, engineering, domain expert etc… Now we have Product Manager orgs with Associate PMs, junior PMs, senior PMs, group PMs etc… A junior PM almost by definition can’t be a product owner. They don’t have the seniority to make decisions, so what you end up with is a situation where senior PMs are handing down solutions to junior PMs who are coming up with even more detailed solutions to engineers. I’ve seen it time and again.
      - ako 3y ago
        Product Owner and Product Manager is not the same, especially in a larger organizations. Product Managers usually dont manage sprint backlogs, as its too fine grained. I often see sprint backlog that contain 20+ stories that add up to 1 customer facing capability/feature.
        sarchertech 3y ago
        I’m not talking about “product owner” as it’s practiced in shitty scrum orgs. I mean product owner as in the person responsible for the product.
karaterobot 3y ago
> That’s what designers are for. Designers interview people, and potential features may come out of that. They don't put those potential features into a roadmap and allocate resources to them. I'm a designer: if it were up to me, I'd spend 99% of my time improving the UX of the product we have, because that's what I care about most. Somebody has to own the vision for the product with respect to the company's business goals, and individual designers and engineers are not the right people for that. Maybe I ought to have phrased that better originally.
- nicoburns 3y ago
  > individual designers and engineers are not the right people for that That kind of depends. The product-minded ones (who are naturally interested in the "producty" kind of work) are excellent people for that. So you may find that in some companies the people doing product work are either engineers or designers. I've often done that from the engineering side, and I've seen it done really excellently by UX designers too. In other companies you may have dedicated people. In my experience, whether it works well or not is less a function of how the roles are divided and more a function of whether the individuals doing product work are good at product work (which is difficult to find, even when they are dedicated product specialists). I think I would probably argue that due to the nature of the job being a lot about connecting different functions of the business and synthesising into a coherent whole, product people tend (on average) to better at their job when they do also have experience with at least some of the other roles they are interacting with (although this isn't necessary to do the job well).
chiph 3y ago
A product manager works at a higher level than those roles. They aren't implementers - they collect information, identify needs, create plans, and get approvals. And then direct the roles you mentioned to do the work needed. A PM will say things like: "I spent 120 hours talking with our users last quarter. They want a macro language added to the product to make their work easier. Our major competitor already has this feature. We have a budget from the executives and 6 months to get it done. We can get the CX person to do some focus groups to figure out how the users expect it to work, the designer to create some interface options for everyone to choose between and then do the UI wireframes, then the leads can work together to plan the coding schedule based on the implementation phases I will give them."
- shuckles 3y ago
  A project manager will do most of that without the unearned self-importance, minus the talking to customers part which should either be done by product marketing or design, depending on the specific business insight you seek.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago

This might make sense for a company with one product, but for a larger company with many products, there's a lot of benefit in having one person per product who understands their product deeply, and can put on any of these hats when required to make the product better.

ryanSrich 3y ago
Seems like you’d have a lot of overlap if what the PM is doing are the activities I listed, and you also employ the people I listed. Also, what engineer doesn’t understand the product deeply from both a technical and business perspective? Maybe a contract dev, or a new hire.
- ako 3y ago
  It’s about responsibility, the PM is responsible for the success of a product. To achieve this he collaborates with all the parties you mention, but in the end the PM has the responsibility. Key in this is bringing together knowledge of the market, the competitors, the customer problems, the value of a solution to these customers, determining a roadmap that will lead towards a successful product, coordinate launch, service, support, and continuous monitoring of the state of the product (does it have the right features, what is the competition doing, what does sales need to effectively sell the product, etc). Reforge provides good training for product managers. This article provides a good overview of a role of a PM: https://www.reforge.com/previews/product/what-does-a-product-manager-do# https://www.reforge.com/previews/product/what-does-a-product...
  - sarchertech 3y ago
    Having one product owner is fine. The problem is that it should be a role someone moves into from one of the disciplines involved. Design, engineering, domain expert etc… Now we have Product Manager orgs with Associate PMs, junior PMs, senior PMs, group PMs etc… A junior PM almost by definition can’t be a product owner. They don’t have the seniority to make decisions, so what you end up with is a situation where senior PMs are handing down solutions to junior PMs who are coming up with even more detailed solutions to engineers. I’ve seen it time and again.
    - ako 3y ago
      Product Owner and Product Manager is not the same, especially in a larger organizations. Product Managers usually dont manage sprint backlogs, as its too fine grained. I often see sprint backlog that contain 20+ stories that add up to 1 customer facing capability/feature.
      - sarchertech 3y ago
        I’m not talking about “product owner” as it’s practiced in shitty scrum orgs. I mean product owner as in the person responsible for the product.

karaterobot 3y ago

> That’s what designers are for. Designers interview people, and potential features may come out of that. They don't put those potential features into a roadmap and allocate resources to them. I'm a designer: if it were up to me, I'd spend 99% of my time improving the UX of the product we have, because that's what I care about most. Somebody has to own the vision for the product with respect to the company's business goals, and individual designers and engineers are not the right people for that. Maybe I ought to have phrased that better originally.

nicoburns 3y ago
> individual designers and engineers are not the right people for that That kind of depends. The product-minded ones (who are naturally interested in the "producty" kind of work) are excellent people for that. So you may find that in some companies the people doing product work are either engineers or designers. I've often done that from the engineering side, and I've seen it done really excellently by UX designers too. In other companies you may have dedicated people. In my experience, whether it works well or not is less a function of how the roles are divided and more a function of whether the individuals doing product work are good at product work (which is difficult to find, even when they are dedicated product specialists). I think I would probably argue that due to the nature of the job being a lot about connecting different functions of the business and synthesising into a coherent whole, product people tend (on average) to better at their job when they do also have experience with at least some of the other roles they are interacting with (although this isn't necessary to do the job well).

chiph 3y ago

A product manager works at a higher level than those roles. They aren't implementers - they collect information, identify needs, create plans, and get approvals. And then direct the roles you mentioned to do the work needed. A PM will say things like: "I spent 120 hours talking with our users last quarter. They want a macro language added to the product to make their work easier. Our major competitor already has this feature. We have a budget from the executives and 6 months to get it done. We can get the CX person to do some focus groups to figure out how the users expect it to work, the designer to create some interface options for everyone to choose between and then do the UI wireframes, then the leads can work together to plan the coding schedule based on the implementation phases I will give them."

shuckles 3y ago
A project manager will do most of that without the unearned self-importance, minus the talking to customers part which should either be done by product marketing or design, depending on the specific business insight you seek.