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:

1. Market research with sales and customers

2. Write requirements

3. Hand requirements over to project managers and engineering

4. Meet with customers about performance and quality concerns

5. 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.

Good Comes from the Chaos

While it was chaotic being a product manager in high tech 20 years ago, helpful trends started trickling into product managers.  Some of the trends that are now quite common helped product managers:

1. Productivity methods such as "Getting Things Done" by David Allen

2. Project Management Professional (PMP) certifications established phase/gate reviews for standards in software development

3. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence became a key leadership skill

Here is a table showing the differences in product management from 20 years ago

Conclusion - Twists and Turns in the Past 20 Years

There are new tools, methodologies, and technology today that weren't around 20 years ago.  Despite this, the core of product management around solving problems, effective communication, and strategic decision-making has stayed constant over the years.

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Product Management Then and Now - by Tanuj Agarwal

It's 1990. We are just entering into a new world that has a new fancy thing called the World Wide Web or the Internet. Mobile phones have started a new path towards miniaturization and affordability. Everyone wanted to ride on this new wave of technological advancement. And a breed of individuals were coming up faster than ever known. They were called Product Managers. These nerds apparently knew the key to unlocking fancy solutions that would transform my life, even before I was born. 

1996 had a major impression on the world. DeepBlue - the first ever computer - beat Gary Kasparov - the unbeatable world chess champion for the first time. Something called AI? Sounds familiar? But there was another unfathomable occurrence in 1996. I was born. Just kidding (or maybe not). 

It's 2019. 39 years have passed by, and I found Product Management and started fancy-ing this role. This role is crowded. Too much noise. Take the 26 letters of the alphabet, join any random letters and you have the name of a framework? What? What is happening! Can we stop without going in CIRCLES? (okay that was bad, I did not get any other pun)

I started anyway. It's 2023. I met Amy Mitchell, a senior leader in the product domain, who mind you, had more experience in product than my experience as a homosapien. And I was curious to know if these frameworks existed even before her. (Sorry, I am not telling you Amy’s age). 

Amy describes a day in her life in the 90s somewhat like this - [Don’t quote me on this- but I am quoting] -
“I am in the office in the morning, creating the 78th copy of that ppt that everyone has asked for but no one would read, that I made on a homegrown office tool because neither there is real time collaboration nor version controlling systems. The ppt basically says what the customer wants and we are setting up on the 6-month cycle to build this. What if it doesn’t work? Nothing. There is no concept of pivoting. I am just a support function to engineers who might or might not listen to me. My role is limited to getting the requirements and hand over and get out. I am travelling a lot to meet customers in person. I was 5 years into this and was expected to support $100M in product revenue. But was I set up for success? Don’t know. Leaders did not have much of emotional intelligence. It was a new thing just coming up. Some new “productivity hacks” like Getting Things Done has just seen the face of Earth.”

I am looking at Amy while she talks through all of this and not being able to relate to most of this, but both of us agreeing on some fundamental stuff. 

Today we have real time collaboration, we have version control, we barely send an email to discuss work. We are the commenting and resolving gen. 6 months to build one thing? Haha. My founder wants to raise funds every 12 days, I do not have 6 months to build. We pivot faster than ever. Call us just a support function, and you will never get any support from us anymore. [Well egos have inflated too, right?]. There are frameworks now - thousands of them - which did not exist before - some are helpful, some I just KANO-t! 

The whole point of this exercise was to see what has remained constant - stood the test of time - because that is probably what Product Management is at its core principle. 

And here is what stayed the same: 

1. Be it countless emails with manual version controlling or a real time document - the core is evangelization. Subset of communication. You needed to communicate then, you need to communicate now. 

2. Be it taking flights to see and understand customer requirements, or be it apply discovery methods and do calls with users - the core is customer insight. You needed to know what to solve for then, you need to know what to solve for now. Teams have evolved though from just being mere messengers to more of explorers and discoverers. 

3. PMs were supposed to impact the bottom line directly. While this got blurred somewhere in between, I think this is coming back. 

4. Engineers and PMs wouldn’t see eye to eye then. Engineers and PMs don’t see eye to eye now. We have JIRA tickets for those. Just kidding. I am not crying, you are. 

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