Overarching Ties
For those of you that are in multi-product environments, chances are you are working with more than 1 product manager. I want to get some thoughts down about effective methods to do this.
Now, to me, the most effective organizational structure is to have a Director of Product Management who then has a team of PM’s reporting to him or her. There may be some other groups that report in as well, but that’s for a different post.
There could be a scenario where you have a director, a VP above them, and disparate PM’s across the org. Now, as a PM you need to recognize that you must a) build indirect power and b) know how and when to use it. So, even if your are in a situation where you are a director with 1 associate PM and two other team members reporting to you, you still have responsibility to execute on the role of director.
I’ll leave out VP-level stuff for now, because it’s out of scope to get into things like managing a PM budget and stuff like that. Again, this isn’t hard folks. It’s easy if you think about it enough, employ common sense, and have a good team supporting one another in the company. But again, outside of scope for now.
So, as a director, you will have a team. PM’s should be good and focused on making sure they can be effective managers (because that’s just effective management, which has nothing to do with PM skills), and still be good PM’s. Directors also have the added layer of determining synergies across an entire line, or multiple lines, of products.
The key here, like all effective management, is delegation. You don’t need to get involved in gathering market data for the products the PM’s reporting to you are working with. That’s one example that would be bad. You REALLY don’t want to start telling them how to construct their roadmap. This is especially true if you have older, more experience PM’s working for you. I’m super touchy about my roadmap, and trust a certain group of people to provide input. This is because I OWN it. It’s mine. I’m responsible. I need to track it, modify it based on my hard-earned research, and flag higher-ups down when I know we’re not going to make a release or we’re going to slip a date.
You are asking for trouble if you start meddling, and telling other PM’s how to manage their product. Funny though, eh? This is just effective delegation. The task is, “manage this product” / “lay out a plan to manage this product, then execute.” Sure, you will want to review key deliverables and understand them — but that’s FAR different from saying, “here’s how to create a roadmap — do 1, 2, 3.”
One of the *key* director-ship responsibilities is identifying cross-product relationships. How can other product teams help other product teams? How can 1 product be more successful in the market if it were to work with another? As a PM director, you are in the spot to recognize this stuff, because it’s all feeding into you. If you are drowning in work, you haven’t delegated OR you need to hire additional help. If you are in a startup, there’s probably no budget to do that, so keep it kicked into high gear.
This all ties into milestone reporting, which I talked about in some other posts a while back. Sit down with your PM’s and identify milestones, and manage to those. You don’t need to be Jack Welch, or have 30 years in business to know how to do that. Communicate, walk over to their desks, discuss things, listen, hold team meetings, leverage one-on-one’s, etc… it’s just effective management. And those concepts take time to refine, but not understand or execute.
Also, you are at the higher-leve of air traffic control. You need to help your team leverage others in the organization if they have to. Typically, PM’s will make do themselves just fine. They should be personable, knowledgeable, and driven enough to get in there and get their hands dirty. However, monitor and ensure that if they need help communicating with Sales, get it to them. AND, if Sales isn’t getting the communication they require about a product, make sure they get it. Air. Traffic. Control.
Most of all, live it, love it, breathe it. I’m up late working and thinking about this stuff because of three fundamental things: a) I love product management. It’s a true passion. b) I love the products I work with. c) I have zero patience to restrain my ambition. I’m getting better at understanding it, but that doesn’t mean it’s hindered me from going 1,000 miles a minute.
I don’t know if any of this made sense — much if it I just wanted to write through as it helps me learn. Maybe Jeff will create a post on “If you want to be a BAD director of product mgmt, do all of the product management for your team of product managers,” or something. One thing’s for sure — it would be way more helpful than my ramblings here, I’m sure.
September 21st, 2007 at 12:54 pm
In a life there are situations when anything except for adrian jennifer cannot help.
In other case don’t worry!