4 ms·

This is under appreciated. What happens is that product managers are either crippled with the fallout from double duty, or, they go mad with power at the extra

This is under appreciated. What happens is that product managers are either crippled with the fallout from double duty, or, they go mad with power at the extra clout they are given to try to compensate for the nonsense position that orgs find themselves in. Both are ugly situations, and either way we lost important checks and balances. Putting anyone else in charge of quality turns into self reporting and always has a conflict of interest

eddythompson80 2y ago
Or what happened in my company where product managers were expected to take on a marketing role, and developers were the ones left with 3 roles or product management (usually left to the dev manager), development and QA on the individual developer. You’re left with product managers have no clue how the product works. They meet with 3-8 customers or other teams a day, and come back with a check-list of “must haves”. They have no idea how the existing product works, they just know that “customer is asking for X, what’s the timeframe for adding X?”. Then dev managers who have to take product management role, so they have no time for understanding how anything is actually built. Their time is spent defining timeframes, requirements, and expectations with other teams. “We trust our developers to do the right implementation”. Then developers who just get piecemeal requirements and are asked to implement it in the simplest fastest way. No time for a major redesign or refactoring of anything. Because from the PM prospective, there is a check-list of items we need and there are 2 unchecked boxes. From the dev manager prospective, we have X and Y, so having XY makes sense. Then from the developer prospective, just duct-tape them together instead of actually building Z which is what makes sense.

4 ms·

This is under appreciated. What happens is that product managers are either crippled with the fallout from double duty, or, they go mad with power at the extra

by photonthug 2y ago

eddythompson80 2y ago
Or what happened in my company where product managers were expected to take on a marketing role, and developers were the ones left with 3 roles or product management (usually left to the dev manager), development and QA on the individual developer. You’re left with product managers have no clue how the product works. They meet with 3-8 customers or other teams a day, and come back with a check-list of “must haves”. They have no idea how the existing product works, they just know that “customer is asking for X, what’s the timeframe for adding X?”. Then dev managers who have to take product management role, so they have no time for understanding how anything is actually built. Their time is spent defining timeframes, requirements, and expectations with other teams. “We trust our developers to do the right implementation”. Then developers who just get piecemeal requirements and are asked to implement it in the simplest fastest way. No time for a major redesign or refactoring of anything. Because from the PM prospective, there is a check-list of items we need and there are 2 unchecked boxes. From the dev manager prospective, we have X and Y, so having XY makes sense. Then from the developer prospective, just duct-tape them together instead of actually building Z which is what makes sense.