What’s Required of our “Product Managers”
Posted on January 4th, 2010 by Paul McArdle – 4 CommentsThe post below is an early draft (and is incomplete).
It has been superseded by a more recent update, which I posted here on the blog on Thursday 25th February 2010. The post below remains here (for now) as a historical curiosity.
The role of the Product Manager follows a similar model as that we will apply to our Chief Software Engineer and, as such, the position might be equally termed:
Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering what the Customer Wants
Again, all three aspects of the role are important.
1) Summary
As Product Manager, you will accept direct responsibility for one (or more) of our Mature Products.
With this responsibility, your focus will be on maximising the value we deliver to clients through this product – whilst at the same time maximising the value we generate for ourselves, over the longer-term.
You will also accept responsibility as a Project Manager in the software development process – utilising the Agile methods promoted by the Chief Software Engineer.
If necessary, you will also play a role in coding, though this will not be your primary focus.
2) Responsibilities
Your responsibilities would be as follows:
(A) Product Development
You will accept responsibility for the ongoing development of your product.
Your focus will be on the ongoing development of this product with a keen eye towards ensuring that each successive upgrade to the product serves to achieve the following:
1) Maintain our high retention rate for the product; and
2) Continue to attract new clients.
(B) Project Management
You will be entrusted with the responsibility of managing certain software development projects.
You will do this, using our Agile software development methods, as they continue to be developed under the guidance of our Chief Software Engineer.
(C) Ancillary Responsibilities
We’re a small company, and will remain this way (relative to our expanding client base). As such, it is required that everyone will accept personal responsibility for making a positive contribution to the business in ways such as the following:
i. Personal Learning Plan
As with all our other people, you will accept personal responsibility for preparation, and implementation, of your personal learning plan – such that it is aligned with our Core Value of “Life-Long-Learning”.
ii. Working ON the business
As with all our other people, you will accept personal responsibility for applying yourself to work ON, and not just IN, the business.
iii. Time spent as our Rostered Support Guru
Everyone in our Product Development Team is expected to take their rostered turn to work as our Rostered Support Guru for a month.
During this month, your singular focus of will be delighting clients who contact us for support, no matter what the product or issue.
iv. Be a Little Bit Remarkable
Yes, you will have the opportunity to create your own weird and wacky job title, as well – just a bit of fun in the interests of becoming remarkable.
This will provide a positive impact on our business – so long as we are actually delighting our clients.
3) Your Core Competencies
For ease of reference, I have separated these into “hard” skills (to do with your technical knowledge) and “soft” skills (to do with the way in which you work):
(A) Hard Skills
To deliver on your responsibilities above, your core skills required fall into one of three baskets:
i. A focus on the Customer
You will develop in yourself, and will foster in others, a relentless desire to deliver real value to the customer.
This will entail placing the “customer perspective” at the centre of your world.
I appreciate that this focus not adopted by all software development organisations (for instance, it does not seem to be front-and-centre of decisions made by Joel Spolsky).
ii. Ability to Innovate, Incrementally
You will upskill yourself in all key aspects of incremental innovation – such that you can use these skills to deliver more value to the customer, where:
VALUE = BENEFIT - COST
iii. Project Management, using Agile
You will continue to upskill yourself in all key aspects of the ways in which to manage software development projects, utilising the Agile mindset.
(B) Soft Skills
i. You will share a longer-term focus to the ongoing development of our business.
This won’t mean a singular focus on the long-term, to the detriment of short-term results. Rather, you will have a focus that rejects the “tyranny of the OR”, in understanding that you can deliver BOTH short-term results, and a sustainable business, long-term.
ii. You will value self-managed teams.
Hence in your role as Project Manager, you will act more as a facilitator than as a top-down authoritarian.
iii. You will become one of the spokespeople for the company. Hence, good communication skills are essential.
For instance, we expect you will want to share your successes on (and seek interaction through) our “Behind the Scenes” blog – or through whatever medium we choose to use in the future.
iv. You will focus delivering results:
a) You will understand that the customer is the ultimate arbiter of value.
b) You will focus more on results, moreso on the process (but not to the extent of being Machiavellian “ends justify the means”)v. You will need to “live” an agile mindset:
a) Agile (big “A”) in software development,
b) Nimble (or agile – small “a”), as the needs of the business change as we grow.
(C) Relationships
To be added…
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[...] Role 2 = Product Managers. [...]
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[...] Who can also assist in coaching/training our aspiring Product Managers such that they can also be masters within the next 5 years, [...]