> the product manager can really help think through before it even goes to the devs/designers. I'm not convinced it's more likely that the PM can think through

> the product manager can really help think through before it even goes to the devs/designers. I'm not convinced it's more likely that the PM can think through the issues better than anyone else on the team. In any decision, in any industry, in any profession, the only way to make a good decision is to understand the cost and benefit at the same time. IMO, almost all corporate software disfunction comes from that failure. The decider understands the cost, but not the benefit, or the benefit, but not the cost. Sales teams that don't understand the product, developers that never talk to customers, managers that don't understand how to code are all trivial examples of this. If the PM designs the feature incorrectly without understanding how to code or understanding the current codebase, there could easily be a 10x cost difference, in terms of implementation and QA. If the developer writes a feature that no customer will accept, all implementation time is wasted. How to fix that failure depends on the relative costs for the PM to learn the codebase, vs. the developer learning the business domain. Though both are nearly essential to a successful company.