12/17/2023 0 Comments Epic meaning in product management![]() ![]() The problem is that neither person truly owns the product, and more importantly, neither person feels and behaves like they are the one ultimately responsible for the product. A product marketing person (sometimes in this model called the “business owner”) is responsible for the high-level business requirements, and a product manager is responsible for the low-level product requirements. This situation is also easy to spot, as there is no single product owner. So then my reaction was to rename the role to something different, but that’s a battle I soon realized had its own problems, so instead I’ve worked to highlight the successful product managers and work to redefine the role around these people. My first exposure to product management was with this situation, and it initially kept me from wanting to have any association at all with this role, but then I met a guy that showed me what product management was really all about. More often, however, the product is in trouble right from the start. If that person has the skills, and also the bandwidth, the product may still succeed. ![]() In this situation, hopefully someone else on the product team steps in and performs the true product management function, sometimes a lead engineer, sometimes a designer, and sometimes a manager. While these people might be great at marketing, they are in way over their heads in trying to define in detail a useful and usable product. There are plenty of Dilbert cartoons portraying this person, and we’ve all known this type of product manager. The rest of the product team views this person as “the marketing resource” that might be useful for creating data sheets, training the sales force, and coming up with the naming and pricing, but in terms of defining the product, this person is largely discounted and ignored. Let’s discuss each of these three problem situations: However, unfortunately, all too often when I begin working with a company I encounter one of three different situations:ġ) there is a product marketing or product manager titled person responsible for the high-level product requirements, and then the product goes straight to engineering – bypassing detailed product requirements and the many tough decisions that go along with that (and also very often bypassing user experience design, but that’s the topic of an earlier set of articles)Ģ) the product definition role is split between a product marketing person responsible for the high-level business/product requirements, and a product manager person responsible for the low-level product requirementsģ) a product marketing person is asked to cover both roles (and the company sometimes calls these people product managers and sometimes product marketing) To be clear right from the start, I argue that every product needs a single, accountable product manager, responsible for the product definition (the combination of product requirements and user experience that describe the product to be built). More about each role below, but as you can see, these are extremely different jobs. I define the role of product marketing as responsible for telling the world about this product. ![]() I define the role of the product manager first and foremost as the person responsible for defining – in detail – the product that the engineering team will build. It is hard to write because I know how tough it is to try to get an industry to change the way it thinks of roles, and even to change the nomenclature it uses in talking about these roles.īefore we get started, to explain this issue I will have to define some terms, fully aware that these definitions will contradict their use in many companies. It’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for a long time, but one that I consider critically important as it gets to the core of what the job of the product manager truly needs to be. I have been meaning to write this article for over a year now. There are many reasons for these bad products, and each article I write is intended to address some aspect, but I have long argued that the root cause of these wasted releases can most often be traced to how the role of product manager is defined at your company, and the capabilities of the people you choose for this role. ![]() Countless release cycles are wasted on products that are either not useful or not usable. I do believe strongly that most releases are ill-conceived. I don’t know if that’s the exact stat or not, but I bet it’s not far off. Industry pundits claim that 9 out of 10 product releases are failures in that they don’t meet their goals. ![]()
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