Know the good product manager and the bad product manager
The product manager issue is probably still not well settled in your mind. You may still not know what a product manager does. Comparing a good product manager and a bad product manager can probably help you get clearer about these people’s role.
Warning: this article was written 15 years ago and may not apply to today’s product managers, but it is a good example of a useful training document.
Good product managers know the market, the product, and the product line, and they have solid foundational knowledge and confidence.
A good product manager is the CEO of their product and takes full responsibility and measurement for the product’s success. They are responsible for providing the right product at the right time.
A good product manager knows the vessel they are in (the company, the revenue model, competitors, and so on) and is responsible for creating and executing a winning plan. (No excuses.)
A bad product manager has a thousand excuses. As usual, there is not enough funding, the engineering manager is an idiot, Microsoft’s engineering team is ten times ours, we work too much and we are not coordinated enough. This complaining is not acceptable for being CEO of the product.
Good product managers do not spend all their time organizing different people so they align to deliver the product to the market and product owners. They do not minute the results of whole-product-team meetings, they are not project managers of various functions, they are not the engineers’ moles.
Good product managers are not part of the product team; they manage the product team. Engineering teams do not see good product managers as a marketing resource. Good product managers stand shoulder to shoulder with marketing and the engineering manager. Good product managers define goals intelligently, and they manage the “what” and the delivery of that “what.” Bad product managers feel their best work is when they solve the “how.” Good product managers communicate easily with engineers in writing and are good at speaking. Good product managers do not steer the team informally. Good product managers collect information informally.
Read more: Strategy is not a to-do list!
Good product managers build a set of documents, FAQs, presentations, and white papers. Bad product managers complain that they spend the whole day answering sales and are drowning in work. Good product managers anticipate product weaknesses and build real solutions. Bad product managers spend the whole day putting out fires.
Good product managers take a written position on important topics (competitive solutions, hard architecture choices, hard product decisions, markets to attack or abandon). Bad product managers announce their words orally and express regret that “the people above” will not let this happen.
Good product managers keep the team focused on revenue and customers. Bad product managers keep the team focused on “how many new features Microsoft is building.” Good product managers define good products that can be executed with a great deal of effort. Bad product managers define good products that cannot be executed, or they let engineers build whatever they want.
Good product managers think about the rules of delivering upstream value to the market during internal planning, and about reaching market share and revenue during external planning. Bad product managers get confused about the differences between delivering value, matching competitive capabilities, pricing, and being present everywhere.
Good product managers break problems apart. Bad product managers combine all the problems together.
Good product managers think carefully about the story they want to write for the media. Bad product managers think about covering every feature and stating technical issues precisely with the media. Good product managers ask the media questions. Bad product managers answer every question that comes from the media.
Good product managers assume that the media and analysts are very smart. Bad product managers assume that the media and analysts are stupid because they do not understand the difference between push and pseudo-push.
Good product managers slip toward clarity and vivid explanations. Bad product managers never explain openly.
Good product managers define their job and their success. Bad product managers constantly want to say what they do.
Good product managers send their status report every week on time because they have work discipline. Bad product managers forget to send their status report on time because they do not value order in the work.