
Things product managers waste their time on - popcorn49
https://blog.appacademy.io/how-should-product-managers-spend-their-time/
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mikekchar
I'm going to admit that I'm ridiculously biased on this topic, which is
terrible since I've never been a PM :-) While I don't disagree with anything
in this article, it falls a bit flat for me because it doesn't say anything
that you _should_ do.

Here's my list of things you should do as a PM:

\- Understand your product. Not just conceptually. Not just how it fits in the
market. Not just what we used to call the "box features" (features you write
down on the box in shrinkwrapped software so people will buy it). You need to
understand what the product does in detail. You need to understand how it does
it in detail. You need to understand exactly how to do every single thing with
the software. You should be an expert -- more than the programmers, more than
the QA, more than the users. You should know what's great, what sucks and
what's in between.

\- You need to prioritise the incoming work. By this I don't mean "X is
priority 1. Y is priority 1. Z is priority 1. ZZ is priority 2". Ordinal
priority. If anyone asks about 2 pieces of work, A and B, you should be able
to say which one is more important and why. You should produce reports that
are visible and understandable that document these priorities so that
everybody can see them.

\- You need to plan the upcoming work. This is different than prioritisation.
To plan the upcoming work you need to break larger goals down into smaller
vertical pieces, each of which give you some value. You should then be able to
arrange these in an order (again ordinal -- none of this "these 500 things all
need to be done at the same time"). To do this, you will need to work with a
variety of different people because you won't have all the information to do
it by yourself.

\- You need to ensure that acceptance criteria is available before development
for something starts. You do not have to furnish this acceptance criteria
yourself, but you must be able to understand it and to judge critically if it
is sufficient.

\- You need to track development and produce reports. You should be able to
say that something is not yet started, but planned to be started in a
specified time frame. You should be able to say that something has started
development. You should be able to say that something is done (and not just
it-compiles-done: done-done-like-we-are-going-to-ship-it-tomorrow-done.) You
need to produce reports that are highly visible by anyone that shows this
status.

\- You need to be active in promoting process that shortens the timescale from
feature request to done-done. Likewise you need to be active in making the
movement of work from request to shipping more and more visible to all
parties.

\- You need to handle political problems between the various groups that have
a stake in development. Do not delegate this.

As far as I can tell, that's it. Not that it isn't a hellishly difficult job
with just the above. As the article suggests, don't waste your time doing
things other than this -- you don't have time! I've had the good fortune of
working with a handful of amazingly good PM's in my day. It's not easy, but
try to be one of the good ones (they are exceptionally rare)!

~~~
natecavanaugh
This sounds a bit like a conflation between Product Managers and _Project_
Management.

Both roles can juggle as needed on the size of the organization, but I imagine
ProdMan positions to be interfacing with consumers needs and the trends and
gathering feedback on new and existing lines of work.

I think one critical skill a ProdMon is to be able to separate the wheat from
the chaff, and prioritizing actually solutions to people's problems and not
just ticking down feature lost from some analyst who's like 6 steps away from
the day to day pain of the people.

A million small evolutions will change the world and take everyone by surprise
:)

~~~
dozzie
> This sounds a bit like a conflation between Product Managers and Project
> Management.

And what's the significant difference between these two titles? I can invent
half a dozen more pro- _something_ manager titles by myself, which doesn't
mean they will be in any way useful.

~~~
jacques_chester
By way of extreme stereotypes, accepting blurriness in the middle:

Project management usually takes some fixed bundle of work and aims to ensure
it is within scope, on time, on budget, to acceptable quality. The typical
focus is to optimise for efficiency. If it is more efficient to build concrete
pylons and then sling cables, that's what happens.

Product management tends to focus on _what_ should be built and in what
_order_. There is less focus on execution and more on understanding what the
problem is -- or whether there _is_ a problem. The typical focus is to
optimise for _value_. If more user or business value comes from throwing a
rope bridge, followed by a single lane suspension bridge, followed by a
concrete bridge, that's the order the product manager will likely pick, even
if it costs more and takes longer to get to the final stage.

Product management is more typical in software, where the ability to quickly
iterate on or replace a product is available. Project management is more
typical of problems where the cost of change is very high (construction, civil
works, spaceflight etc), creating a strong incentive to do the thing _once_.

~~~
dozzie
> Project management usually takes some fixed bundle of work and aims to
> ensure it is within scope, on time, on budget, to acceptable quality.

And project manager does that by what means? What useful things can a project
manager do to achieve these goals? Barring telling the team how to do their
work (micromanagement) and reordering project goals (this is supposed to be
product manager's job).

~~~
rahimnathwani
Your comment suggests that all work involved in delivering something is either
(i) setting and prioritising goals, or (ii) doing the work to achieve those
goals.

But there are other things that a good project manager can do in some
situations, particularly around driving consensus around coordination between
different teams when things are changing a lot, and figuring out ways that re-
allocating resources can unblock other teams, and so deliver the project
earlier overall.

BUT many people with the job title 'project manager' aren't really doing those
things, either because those things don't need doing in the organization where
they work, or because they lack the skills/drive to do them.

Even if you haven't worked in a project that required a project manager, or
met a good project manager, it doesn't mean these things don't exist.

(I'm not a project manager btw, and the things a project manager needs to do
are not among my favourite tasks, although I do them when required.)

~~~
dozzie
So it's a list of things that _may_ be done _if_ we have an (almost mythical)
good manager at hand _and_ the organization in the company is right? Not a
list of concrete responsibilities that just come with the position and if the
guy doesn't fulfil them he's outright incompetent?

Then again, what is the difference between fundamental responsibilities of
_project_ and _product_ manager? The ones that need to be done by one and
cannot be done by the other.

~~~
rahimnathwani
Just like not every situation requires a bricklayer, and not every person
claiming to be a bricklayer is actually competent at building walls.

Your second question is answered here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16240377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16240377)

