Most companies out there put a huge push on efficiency and running “lean” — doing the most possible with the least amount of overhead. And in most cases, that’s a very noble goal — after all, overhead in the form of people and positions is generally the highest cost that companies face. Reducing the number of people needed to achieve the same goals allows the revenue side of the equation to exceed the costs — which is almost every company’s end goal, to achieve a sustainable business model that makes money for the owners of the business. The problem with this is that it’s often taken too far — the drive to be “lean” winds up causing more headaches and issues than it creates an environment conducive to success. This issue isn’t only of concern to Product Managers, it affects every part of the business, from sales to marketing to support to development. And because of that, we’re often in a unique position to see they dysfunctions that trying to drive too lean causes throughout the company. It’s up to us to be aware of the risks and raise them as we start to see red flags, before they damage the ability of the organization as a whole to compete in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
Knowing Your Effort Budget
It’s amazing to me how often I talk with someone about a project they’re working on, and when asked “what’s your budget on this” they just look at me with a blank look. Let’s be real for a minute — everything we do in product design, development, and management has limits. We have limited resources. We have limited time. We have limited energy. But all too often we just assume that everything that we’re doing requires 100% of our effort, 100% of the time. But that’s simply not true. Some things are more important than others. Some things require more time and effort and energy than others. Some things that we do can slip through with a smaller amount of our attention than others. We instinctively do this, but we rarely actually plan it — and that’s to our detriment and to the detriment of our stakeholders. Laying out a clear understanding of the amount of effort that you’re expecting to spend on any given project or component can be an essential tool in any Product Manager’s belt.
Assumptions, Risks, and Constraints – The Keys to Success
One of the most important parts of being a Product Manager is making sure that your stakeholders and developers understand not only what you’re trying to do, but the surrounding circumstances in which you’re trying to do it. Often, this is a matter of discussing and managing scope; at other times, it’s making sure that people understand the schedule and resources working on the improvement; and at still other times, it’s ensuring that what comes out at the end of an iteration is what everyone wanted at the beginning of the iteration. But there’s a larger set of considerations that are of key importance to aligning your teams on — because they significantly impact the overall success of what we’re trying to do. All too often we ignore these three components to our peril, and when we do there’s an even chance that they’ll come back to bite us in the ass…
That Which is Urgent is Not Always Important
We’ve all been there — that sudden call from one of your Sales team with a customer “on the hook” but they only need this one more thing to close the deal. Or maybe it’s an escalated issue from your biggest customer that lands in your mailbox with gigantic ALL CAPS AND EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!! Or worse yet, it’s your CEO who “stops by for a quick chat” about something that he overheard at an industry event last night. Regardless of where these things come from, they all have one thing in common — they’re urgent. They require your time now. They simply cannot be ignored.
Or can they? Or more accurately, should they be ignored? If you ask me, the answer is absolutely. Things that are “urgent” are thrust upon us by others with some expectation that we’ll drop everything and deal with them — not on our terms, but on the terms of someone else. Here’s why you should beware of the urgent and instead focus on what’s important…
You’re Already a Product Manager…
One of the most common questions I encounter in my work as The Clever PM is a simple one — “How do I become a Product Manager?” And, while the specifics depend greatly on the individual person, where they’re at in their careers, and what companies they want to break into, one of the things that I’m always telling people is that it’s likely that they already have the skills that they need. The best and worst part about being a Product Manager is that the role is often a “jack of all trades” role — filling in where there are gaps in the organization, ranging from the strongly strategic to the severely tactical. No matter where you sit in your organization, chances are good that with the right perspective and point of view, you can likely position the things you do to fit some definition of “Product Manager”.
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How to Be a More Agile Product Manager
Due to the unique role that Product Managers play in most organizations, we’re often capable of being the strongest influences on the overall culture of the product development organization and of the company in general. And while there are many companies out there who are truly only interested in giving lip service to the concept of agility, there are others who actually want to be better, who want to embrace the concepts of agility — and it’s up to us as leaders to influence that and contribute where we can. While there are a lot of different behaviors that we can engage in which are likely to increase the adoption of agile practices across our organization, in my experience there are three key things that we should focus on if we want to broaden the success of agile adoption in our companies…
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Pack ’em Up! Understanding Your Portable Skills
I’m often asked by in both formal and informal discussions whether I think that Product Managers are stuck in whatever industry they start in, and if not how to break into a new one. And through all the years of having these discussions I’ve determined that the vast majority of the skills that make someone a great Product Manager are entirely portable between companies, products, and industries. You can learn a new product pretty easily, assuming that you have an organization with a good onboarding process. You can learn the market pretty quickly, assuming that the company has some internal experts already there to learn from. And you can learn the politics of the organization by just paying a small iota of attention in your first 30-60 days in the organization. None of those things are directly determinative of success as a Product Manager — what is determinative is the soft skills that you bring along with you, your approaches to problem solving and consensus-building. To that end, here are three key skills that any Product Manager should leverage no matter where they are and no matter where they want to go.
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