Product Management Then and Now
What has changed in product management?
This week’s newsletter is based on a recent conversation with Tanuj Agarwal. We discussed the differences in product management in the past years. We each wrote a summary of our conversation. Tanuj’s take is very funny - please read to the end to see his humorous summary of our talk.
Turn Back the Clock - Product Manager Activities
Before Jobs-to-be-Done and Agile frameworks, product managers typically did the following:
Market research with sales and customers
Write requirements
Hand requirements over to project managers and engineering
Meet with customers about performance and quality concerns
Go back to Step #1
Due to the amount of travel and conference calls on the customers' schedule, product managers missed product development activities. Product managers rarely could attend product team meetings.
This worked ok for a stand-alone product.
Roadmaps and Solutions
At the same time Linux OS, VOIP, and networking protocols were providing standards for interconnected solutions.
Products were connected with layered protocols. In addition to working with customers, product managers had to work together to align products into solutions.
Product managers, architects, and sales engineers created reference solutions and solution roadmaps to coordinate protocol versions along with product versions.
Meanwhile, project managers and engineers, who were left out of the solution work, created separate product-centric roadmaps.
What is the Relevance of Product Managers?
With complex solutions and multiple roadmaps, the role of product management was unclear. The 3 Ps - Project Management, Program Management, and Product Management - were debated in many forums. Organizations were heavily investing in engineering and development.
At the time, a product manager with 5 years of experience was expected to support $100M in product revenue.
The very busy product managers created frameworks to keep up with the new solutions and protocols. It was very important to make yourself relevant to the engineering teams running the product.