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Friday Fun: Is product management a profession?
My friend Saeed has decided to start a little controversy. Is product management really a profession? Can it be defined? Can it be learned? In particular, why is it that we say we want to be strategic but all of the discussions and webinars and articles seem to be about tactics: product launch, templates, leadgen, running the agile stand-up, writing better user stories?
Saeed asks,
What have we done in the last 10 years to make our lot better? And I don’t just mean incrementally better? I mean significantly better?
What I hear from hundreds of seminar attendees over the years is that new product managers need help figuring out where to spend their time. Or to put it another way, three days of training is better than zero days.
Adam from Write That Down adds:
Is product management hard? No. The trick is not being the best marketer, accountant, UI designer, developer, sales person all rolled in to one. The trick is to make sure that features get built, marketing communicates them, support can answer questions, and sales can sell.
So let's sound off. Post a comment below or on Saeed's site about the results that you have seen based on strategic product management.
Get Product Mgmt Into MBA Programs
I'm not a proponent of everyone having an MBA, but I can't deny that many people are going for them, and that's great. So just like strategy and finance and marketing are introduced and discussed in MBA programs, product management should be as well.
The issue though is how different product management in a non-software organization can sometimes be; and that comes back to improper titling and job descriptions.
If a standard method for describing the job / role is pushed into MBA streams, more kids will be graduating with the "I want to be a product manager" mindset - and actually know what that means in the real world.
It's not just about training....
Thanks for the post and the solicitation for comments.
For clarity, the issue is not simply about training. 3 days of any kind of training are better than no training at all. So for someone who is just entering the field with little or no prior knowledge, the net better be beneficial.
But, taking a macro level view, the understanding and development of Software Product Management in the industry is progressing far slower than that of other functions in the software industry.
My post is as much an assessment of the slow rate of change in the last decade as it is a call for us to change the trajectory going forward. What can we do to accelerate the positive understanding and impact of Product Management in our industry.
Ideally, that's what I'd like to hear about from your readers.
Saeed