The Role of the Product Manager

I have been thinking about the role of the Product Manager in an Enterprise Software Company.

I have heard it being said often that the Product Manager is the CEO of the product. The financial success of the Product finally rests with the Product Manager. It’s also been said that Product Managers need to be a bit of everything to help the product journey. At the different organizations that I have worked at as a Product Manager, I have found myself working on Sales functions - meeting prospective customer’s and pitching the product, Marketing - writing marketing material, reviewing collaterals, evangelizing the product, pricing - figuring out the price and even being the price discount approver for deals. Most of my fellow product managers will be able to relate to these, and most have accepted them as an unfortunate fallout of the blurred borders of the role.

However, I think the Product Managers job can be precisely defined, if the objective is understood clearly:

A Product Manager is not responsible for the success of the Product, she/he is responsible for the success of the customer through using the Product.

There you have it! If the objective is clear, all roles and responsibilities fall in place.

Should the Product Manager be creating marketing collaterals? Absolutely not. If the marketing team is lacking in their responsibilities of understanding the product and the market, that is not the Product Managers problem. Is the Product Manager responsible for sales or revenue? In my opinion, no. The sales should be happening because of what the product manager is doing, but she/he should not be held responsible for the actual revenue numbers. What about pricing? Should the Product Manager work out the pricing? If a Product Manager were to be responsible for the pricing, by definition, the customer gets the lowest price point possible, and that would not help the business. So, no.

All that the Product Manager should focus on is to get in the customers shoes, feel their needs, understand the problems they are facing, listen to the signals from the product usage telemetry, study competitive products, in order to come up with better experiences, and help build the best solution within the business constraints. The Product Manager should also review/write documentation, or, better still, make the UI so intuitive that documentation becomes unnecessary, etc., etc. But we Product Managers already know and love to do these things.

Then, why are we doing all those additional duties that are thrust on us as well? The reason for that is, there is no good measure for the success of the customer (customer satisfaction is not customer success, and customer retention is too late in the product lifecycle). So, the success of the customer is (erroneously) equated to revenues from the product line, which should ideally be a Marketing and Sales OKR. And so, Product Managers in the past have chipped in to fill the inadequacies in Sales, Marketing and other departments. Now, some of those activities have come to be expected from the Product Manager.

So, guys and girls in the Product Management community! Let’s set the records straight. Spread the word. Make sure that people in your organizations understand the role of the Product Manager, let them know what you stand for. Do not accept those irrelevant activities that are imposed upon you, and focus on the jobs to be done!

If we do our jobs right - if we are left alone to our jobs, that is, we will finally be building the right products and solving the right problems. The world will be a better place as we rid it of all the horrendous products, with unnecessary, bloated features, that we are forced to build in a vicious cycle of competitive takeouts (no secrets here!). What do you think?