PM role is not a negative space role
Okay then, I debated quite a bit whether to write this or not, but Sidu’s article on PMs is so well written that I almost believed it in the first reading and then on the second read realized I don’t agree with most of it (It is that good. Hat tip to great writing!).
The PM role is NOT a negative space role that fills up the gaps of specialist roles and any young PM who believes that is not setting themselves up for success.
The PM role IS a specialist role in itself - The PM specializes in the following:
Prioritization of customer problems
Building consensus for those being actual problems that are to be solved in that priority
Carrying the context of the problem across the execution funnel - through design, engineering, QA, and then Marketing
This specialist role involves developing these ACTUAL skills.
Prioritisation of customer problems
Needs the ability to get insights from customers - Knowing how to generate insights with customer conversations, doing well-designed surveys, observing their behavior in scenarios where your product is likely to be useful, understanding the basics of psychology
Needs the ability to get insights from Data - Needs to be able to break down a problem into logical inputs (what is fancily called Analytical thinking), frame the right questions that will help solve the problem, needs the ability to write code to get the data, needs the ability to then present the data insights in a consumable format
Needs the ability to get insights from the market - Needs the ability to voraciously read content related to your market and pick out insights, Need the ability to network with the right folks, and have the ability to get insights related to your product
Needs the ability to connect dots/pattern match - Connecting all of the above 3 inputs to generate an actual direction, Knowing the history of various products, and having the experience yourself on how these usually play out
Building consensus for those being actual problems that are to be solved in that priority
Needs the ability to be an excellent storyteller
Needs to be to top-notch at both verbal and nonverbal communication
Needs again to understand psychology - motivations/fears/incentives/consumption style of various stakeholders and modify your communication approach accordingly to ensure your message gets through to everyone
Carrying the context of the problem across the execution funnel - through design, engineering, QA, and then Marketing
The reason why PMs can’t chuck a PRD over the wall and wash their hands is this - at all parts of the product lifecycle, you are expected to be the decision maker on the inevitable tradeoffs that will happen on the “Shop Floor” and ensure those decisions get made with the context of the customer problem - because you are supposed to understand that more deeply than anyone else.
Want to cut something from this release - is this the right thing to do for the customer problem we set out to solve?
Want to cut corners and make a particular action slightly slow - is this the right thing to do for the customer problem we set out to solve?
Tanmay Bhat came up with this funny ad story to market your feature? - is this the right thing to say to ensure our customers understand that we have actually solved the problem we set out to solve?
You get the drift.
Please focus on developing these actual skills and don’t just spend all your time cleaning up after others! This is what will make you valued and not fungible in the team.
But this is all a Designer’s job?
The starting state of any product team is a 1 person army - this person can do all the things I mentioned above + Design the right solution + Code it up themselves + QA it + then go and market it to millions of customers.
The roles we create are just made-up lines we draw to find people who can be great at one part of the product lifecycle instead of being good enough on many.
So can a designer do that job? - Yes.
Can a PM do a designer’s job? - Yes again.
Can the front-end engineer do the designer’s job? - Yes why not?
Can a QA one day wake up and start doing marketing? - Obvs.
Can a backend engineer do a front engineer’s job? Oh hello there full stack 10x engineer!
Anyone CAN do anyone’s job, and sometimes they may HAVE to - but saying they can do it as well as someone who has been at it for years together is just grossly underestimating the amount of time and energy it takes to be top 1% in any of these individual slices of the product life cycle (and I have at this point cut very very broad slices).
Interestingly, when I was chatting with folks from companies like HUL/ITC, you realize that both Product Management and Product Design are specializations cut from one big monolith called MARKETING.
Product management actually came first is my best guess, these were people who used to decide what the customer problem is, build consensus and sit with designers to just tell them what the solution was going to be and Designers would just fire up those paint brushes/Photoshop (depending on how far back you go) to bring that solution to life.
At some point, we cut this even further and focused the PM role on what I described above and created a new specialization of Product Design who now focus on becoming the masters of finding the perfect solution for the problem identified (this itself takes time and is very much a full-time gig and has its own set of specialist skills to develop on, just like PM!).
Edit: Adding what I think is the split of responsibilities of PM and Design as some people asked me
PM - Goal owner/Goal setting, Problem discovery and prioritization, Consensus building around Problem and prioritization, Carrying the context of the problem through execution
Design - Solution owner, Drive solution consensus backed by data and user research, Ensuring what is built is the best answer to the problems prioritized, Own the outcome of each solution shipped in terms of solution success metrics
High agency is the PM’s burden
This line of thinking and the whole “The best PMs I’ve worked with are all masochists at some level” gives me gaslighty vibes. It is just a way to:
Make PMs believe they have no specialization (i.e actual thing you are responsible and valued for), so the best thing you bring to the table is your ability to suffer pain
Make PMs believe that it is on them to make up for all incompetencies of others in the product lifecycle
Neither of that is true.
High agency is a trait that EVERYONE in the product TEAM should have - PMs, Designers, Engineers, QAs, Marketers, EVERYONE.
Thankfully, I have had the pleasure of working in teams where this has largely been true. Different people from the team step up when needed from all functions thus ensuring that no one person deals with this burden all the time and burns out.
If you are working in a team where cleaning up the dog poo is just one function/person’s responsibility, then you are - not set up for success!
You can do better!
Summary
PM is a specialist role
No one can wake up one day and do a great PM’s job
Cleaning up dog poo is not just on PMs