Success in Product Management

I came across a series of articles today on the Product Strategy Network discussing what it takes to succeed in a Product Management role. They list a number of factors including several that stood out for me over the past few months in a PM role at Local Matters:

• Prioritize and adapt to change because you are doing something different every day.
• Think big picture instead of listening to whoever screams the loudest or drops by your office the most.
• Articulate Business Outcomes instead of Development Outcomes of your Product.
• Help inform engineering instead of just dropping your requirements document on their desk and coming back at the end of the iteration. “Engineers want to build products that succeed, that sell, that delight customers.”
• Know your customers so that you can represent them to engineering, design, QA, etc.
• Engage the customer in design and development. More than just asking them to communicate problems or needs, PMs should bring customers closer to the product by having them write a spec or alpha / beta test the product.
• Separate tactical and strategic tasks. With our more recent adoption of Scrum methodologies I am finding it is very easy to get wrapped up in the tactical tasks of being a Product Owner and neglect strategic planning work such as creating roadmaps or longer term vision. This is still a subject of much debate in PM circles but for me it starts with having an effective Scrum Master to make sure the team doesn’t get bogged down with process minutia (which is bound to happen especially in an organization implementing Agile for the first time).

Finally, the one I like the most: Stop and Smell the Roses. I’ve noticed that it is easy to get wrapped up in one or many aspects of Product Management and neglect important things like market research, learning your product, customer feedback or even just spending some time thinking.