Shifting to PM from User Research, I was a lot like Doug from the article - I knew customers' pains and needs like no one else in the company, but lacked the experience of connecting my ideas with business impact.
Thanks for this insight - you've articulated a feeling I've had for the last few months: with the whole ai shift, expectations on the product managers job have gone up, not down. You need mba-skills to stand up to it. Our job is getting broader and broader.
Thank you for confirming this shift to business connections! Coming to PM from engineering, I hope these tips can help more PMs shift to business communications.
Great article, Amy! Am curious if you think PMs need an MBA to connect the dots? I know Hans-Jörg mentioned MBA skills (not specifically an MBA), but what’s the best way to acquire those skills?
From my perspective, PMs have always been expected to have business acumen, but for the past decade or so there are at least two aspects contributing to the lack of focus of business results:
1. The business itself got overly focused on speedy delivery, and scrum contributed to this obsession. I’m a fan of scrum for delivery, but first teams need make sure they are building the right thing (discovery), before building it right (delivery).
2. Systems that make data hard to extract and trust, making it near impossible to connect the dots and actually believe in it. I see this as just one of the reasons for the rise of ProdOps in the past few years. Even is the PM has business acumen, they and the cross functional teams need help connecting the dots and trusting the data.
This is indeed very important and often underrepresented. Being the "CEO of the product" (even though Marty Cagan probably regrets having used that term) means taking care of the financials as well.
Shifting to PM from User Research, I was a lot like Doug from the article - I knew customers' pains and needs like no one else in the company, but lacked the experience of connecting my ideas with business impact.
Thanks for sharing this insight!
Same for me moving to PM from engineering. Seeing examples helps!
🙏 thank you
Great article! I am sharing this with my team!
Thank you! If you have feedback then I’m interested!
Thanks for this insight - you've articulated a feeling I've had for the last few months: with the whole ai shift, expectations on the product managers job have gone up, not down. You need mba-skills to stand up to it. Our job is getting broader and broader.
Thank you for confirming this shift to business connections! Coming to PM from engineering, I hope these tips can help more PMs shift to business communications.
Great article, Amy! Am curious if you think PMs need an MBA to connect the dots? I know Hans-Jörg mentioned MBA skills (not specifically an MBA), but what’s the best way to acquire those skills?
From my perspective, PMs have always been expected to have business acumen, but for the past decade or so there are at least two aspects contributing to the lack of focus of business results:
1. The business itself got overly focused on speedy delivery, and scrum contributed to this obsession. I’m a fan of scrum for delivery, but first teams need make sure they are building the right thing (discovery), before building it right (delivery).
2. Systems that make data hard to extract and trust, making it near impossible to connect the dots and actually believe in it. I see this as just one of the reasons for the rise of ProdOps in the past few years. Even is the PM has business acumen, they and the cross functional teams need help connecting the dots and trusting the data.
Great points about how got here and having data for business understanding.
Building relationships with finance is a start to finding data that matters. Then experimenting and learning.
It is challenging! I plan to write more about what I do to add business acumen to my product skills.
This is indeed very important and often underrepresented. Being the "CEO of the product" (even though Marty Cagan probably regrets having used that term) means taking care of the financials as well.
Being able to communicate business impact in complex environments is becoming a key part of the PM job. Thinking like a GM helps with business acumen.