The Clever PM

Tips, tricks, and hacks that help you to be a better, more clever, Product Manager.

The Roadmap Conundrum

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Roadmaps are a pretty popular topic whenever Product Managers congregate — whether that’s online or at events like ProductCamp.  It’s also one of the things that new Product Managers or Product Managers moving into a new role in an organization often struggle with.  It doesn’t help matters that different companies, different execs, and even different product managers can often have entirely different opinions about what a roadmap is, what it looks like, and what it’s supposed to be used for.

But the Clever PM has never been one to shy away from a challenge or from a controversial issue — so let’s take a closer look at exactly what product roadmaps are, why they’re important, and what you should probably include (or exclude!) from yours.

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What Exactly *IS* Product Management, Anyway?

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Trying to come up with a single, global definition of what “Product Management” is and what it incorporates, often seems like a massive exercise in folly. Wikipedia describes Product Management as “an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning, forecasting, or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle.” And, while that is an entirely accurate statement, it’s also completely useless to those of us who have taken a role in a company that calls itself by that name. Looking further afield, you’ll find others who claim to have a definition that’s both specific and useful. Consider the following:

  • Pragmatic Marketing: “Product Management is the messenger of the market.”
  • AIPMM: “Product management is the cross-functional discipline within a product development organization responsible for managing a product (a tangible good or intangible service) throughout all phases of its lifecycle.”
  • Marty Cagan: “The job of the product manager is to discover a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible.”

Some of these are better than others, but to me all of them fail to capture the practical side of what exactly it is that a Product Manager does, and why it’s important to a business to have a professional PM in that role. To that end, I’ve coined the following definition of Product Management, that I’ve polished and updated over the course of my years in the profession:

“Product Management is a multi-disciplinary role that guides the strategic and tactical efforts of a product to ensure that, in the end, a marketable product is delivered to the end user. Their primary purpose is to gather market intelligence, perform customer research, translate customer ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ into requirements, and occasionally to shepherd those requirements through to delivery.”

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Product Manager or Product Owner – What’s the Difference?

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In the search for a Product Management role, many people become confused by the deceptively similar descriptions, expectations, and requirements that they find for Product Owner and Product Manager roles in various organizations. I’m sorry to say, this is another reflection of the inability of our Product Management culture and discipline to adopt a clear standard for what a Product Manager is and what a Product Manager does.  The roles are similar enough that there’s an easy and excusable amount of confusion, but they are also different enough that it’s important to discuss these differences, why they exist, and what they really mean for a person seeking a “true” Product Management (or Product Owner) role.

To be honest, I could have chosen any number of seeming homonyms for Product Management — there’s Business Analyst, Program Manager, Product Leader, Product Designer, and many, many more.  But the problem with picking any of those other terms is that they’re just as amorphous and nebulous as “Product Management” is.  Thankfully, that’s not the case with the term “Product Owner” which has some clear definitions and expectations thanks to its close relationship with Scrum/Agile development practices.

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