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One of the oddest parts of being a product manager is how busy you are and yet how often what you actually do feels transient. In other words, as you work through a product’s life cycle, at certain times you may just be producing a short Word document or a simple tracking spreadsheet while many other people are off writing pages and pages of code or creating tons of marketing material. However, without your direction, these folks wouldn’t be able to be nearly as productive.

In this section, we cover some of the roles you work with closely. Sometimes you’re checking in with each other hourly and sometimes you’re in contact less frequently because you’re in a different phase of the product life cycle, working with different departments or working with different development methodologies. However, knowing how the roles fit together is integral to producing a successful product.

Checking out product marketing

Creating or updating a product is always such a great feeling. One small problem: Your customers need to learn about it, too. That’s where product marketing managers come in. Their primary goal is to create demand for the product through effective messaging and programs. If these people do their jobs well, your product has a shorter sales cycle and higher revenue.

The product marketing manager role is broken down into four parts:

❯❯ Market strategy expert: Market strategy lays the foundation for market success. It is the high-level thinking, planning, and research that happens before a product goes to market. The product marketing manager has an in-depth knowledge of the market and how the product should enter that specific market. In practice, this idea means knowing which customer segment to target, how to reach it, and what combination of messages will drive these customers to buy (see Figure 2-3). Note that in the figure, the messages aren’t the taglines, and the benefits are stated in the language of the customer. Then the strategy is executed through the launch and eventually marketing plan.

❯❯ Marketing expert: After the product marketing manager analyzes market opportunities for your product, he then creates key messages that guide marketing efforts. In conjunction with marketing communications (also known as marcom), the product marketing manager’s goal is to generate customers that demand or pull your product through to sale. This comprehensive market understanding is one reason that the product marketing manager participates in or decides on pricing.

In many companies, pricing is part of finance or is a specialty function. But it can also be in the hands of product management. Wherever it is, product marketing should at the very least participate in the decision making so that any market forces are understood before a final decision is made. Involve your product marketing manager in any pricing decision that takes place.

Product marketing managers ensure that all the messages are consistent. Consistency builds awareness, layer by layer, in the customer’s mind. And she works with marcom to make sure that what product managers decide to say about a product translates correctly into web, mobile, or printed materials.

❯❯ Marketing program guidance: This piece is the traditional core of the product marketing role. It’s here where a product marketing manager, in conjunction with the product manager, outlines the product positioning which articulates the value proposition. On the basis of the positioning, he works out the messaging and links each feature to a customer-oriented benefit. Chapter 10 has more information about creating compelling marketing messages.

Value proposition is a clear statement of what problem your product solves and why customers should choose your product over someone else’s.

❯❯ Supporting sales: Product marketing managers can create a library of marketing collateral, which should generate market pull. However, your salespeople may need to work harder for a sale. They’re the ones who generate market push by convincing customers to buy your product. To do so effectively, sales needs great sales tools. For example, they often need good product training, a solid product presentation, and a compelling demonstration. A product marketing person knows what salespeople need for them to get their jobs done and what points to emphasize so that the sales pitch is more successful.

FIGURE 2-3: Examples of a marketing message and corresponding tagline.

Some companies expect you to do both product management and product marketing plus the entire marketing role all by yourself. If that’s your situation, read Marketing For Dummies by Alexander Hiam (Wiley) to see how the responsibilities of product management, product marketing, and marketing all fit together.

AGILE-SPECIFIC ROLES

Agile is a flexible way of developing products that mostly applies to software development. Refer to Chapter 12 for more details. Agile has two very specific roles that you don’t see in other development environments: the product owner and the scrum master. The scrum master is typically only used in a specific version of Agile called scrum. The following figure illustrates which responsibilities lie exclusively with the product manager (PM), which are shared according to preference and skill between the product owner (PO) and product manager, and which are specifically allocated to a product owner. Use this figure and the later sections on RACI and DACI to have a discussion within your own organization to clarify roles and responsibilities.

© 2017, 280 Group LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Here are definitions of the specific roles:

• Product owner: The mission of the product owner is to represent the customer to the development team. A key activity is to manage and make visible the product backlog, or the prioritized list of requirements for future development. In fact, the product owner is the only person who can change the order of items in the product backlog. One unusual aspect of product owner responsibilities is that she must be available to the development team at all times to answer any questions team members have regarding the customer’s view of how they’re implementing a product feature.

A product owner shouldn’t be a scrum master. In many teams the product manager is also the product owner. This situation leads to a crushing workload and difficult-to-manage expectations because product managers should be spending a fair amount of time understanding customers’ needs by being outside of the office. The need to be in the office as a product owner – and yet still have a deep understanding of customers – is a conflict that continues to create great difficulty for product managers and product owners in Agile development organizations.

• Scrum master: The scrum master role is to keep the development team working at the highest level of productivity. This person facilitates scrum rituals that drive the iterations with the scrum team and the product owner. She ensures that scrum processes and scrum-specified meetings are being followed and checks progress against expectations. Critically, she acts as a coach or facilitator for the team, helping team members solve problems and remove impediments to their progress.

The scrum master can be a part time role or shared among multiple scrum teams, but under no circumstances should scrum master be a product owner.

Looking into program management

Program management is typically a department dedicated to managing the critical internal processes of an organization so that it meets internal targets. For example, program managers might work across the company to develop a new way of delivering a product to market. Or they may track how much is being spent to deliver a new product platform. In companies that are regulated or in which precision is very important, program management ensures that the important processes are reviewed and complied with. In some instances, project managers report into program management, but this isn’t universally the case.

Because the term program management is used inconsistently, get clarity with your program manager about what program management folks are specifically supposed to do. In your interactions with them, they’ll continually be looking at process and control issues. You may need to explain that the strategic and integrative parts of the product management role aren’t quantifiable in the way that those people like to look at work, but the output from product management is generally very beneficial to the company. Use the promise of the key product management deliverables (market strategy, market needs, and business case) as a measure of items to be checked off their list of tasks that need to be completed as part of the process of deciding which products to invest in. Then you only need to worry about making sure what you’ve written makes sense and will create great products.

Exploring project management

Project managers are a product manager’s alter ego. Product managers keep the customer and the big picture in mind under all circumstances. Project managers make sure that all team members are doing what they promised to do to keep the project on track and that each detail is completed on time. There are two models of project management. One is the project manager reports into engineering and helps with keeping the product on track until it is completed and available to the market. A second, if you’re very lucky, is your company has adopted a more complete view of the role of project management and makes sure that every aspect of the product is completed. This includes marketing, sales, operations, and support teams, which are all ready to deliver the product to market successfully. Ask which model your company uses so that you can set your expectations of what the project manager is willing to do for and with you. Often they know what even the most obscure tasks are that are necessary to bring a product to market, and their information can be worth its weight in gold.

Both product management and project management functions are necessary to effectively get a product out the door and into customers’ hands.

In smaller or growing companies, the role of project manager can be assigned to the product manager. If this is your situation, as product manager, you find that you are spending all your time filling in spreadsheets of tasks that have been done or need to be done. You have little or no time for strategic work or reaching out to hear the voice of the customer. As project and product manager combines, you may be perceived much more as a doer than a thinker and generally have less influence within the organization to develop new concepts and markets.

Companies have project managers to manage risk. By communicating often, project participants can voice their opinions and concerns. The project manager must consider not only the technical skills of each person but also the critical roles and chemistry between workers.

Key duties include the following:

❯❯ Assembling a complete list of tasks required to complete the project, including those from other departments, and incorporating these items into a project schedule

❯❯ Creating and managing the project schedule (as part of the overall master schedule)

❯❯ Monitoring and tracking progress against the schedule and reporting progress, slippage, and changes in the schedule to the company

❯❯ Identifying and managing potential risks in the schedule, ensuring there are contingency plans if something doesn’t go to plan

❯❯ Managing the project documentation, especially the latest versions of plans and schedules

❯❯ Defining project milestones: entrance, intermediate and integration stages, alpha, beta, and final product release

❯❯ Being the expert in the product development and delivery processes

❯❯ Leading project team meetings

❯❯ Coordinating sign-off at the completion of each stage

❯❯ Analyzing development progress, including defect resolution

❯❯ Managing resource allocation and load balancing

If you work in an Agile development environment, the role of project manager either disappears or is elevated to oversee schedules and plans for several development teams. If the role disappears, it’s because Agile environments have less need for project tracking. A core definition of Agile is that the teams organize themselves. The development team and the scrum master split what is left. And the software that tracks product backlog items allows anyone to easily see the project status. If any issues are identified during the regular planning and review meetings that Agile prescribes, the product manager (or product owner), the scrum master, and the development team have to bring a project back on track.

For larger development efforts where there are many scrum teams, there are different organizing methodologies. Under a commonly used one, named SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), the role is renamed as a release train engineer. For more information, look at the “Agile-specific roles” sidebar earlier in the chapter.

MAKING A LIST, CHECKING IT TWICE

Because the role of product manager interacts with various people in a company, start by interviewing people in different roles and making a list of the responsibilities mentioned. Ask each person what he does and what he expects of you. You may be surprised by what people say and what tasks have ended up as your responsibility. Of course, check with your manager to see whether the tasks people are flagging as being your job are really places where you add value and are things no one else could do effectively.

Knowing what other roles you interact with

As product manager, you touch almost every part of an organization and may not even realize it. Only many years after you’ve left a product management role and find someone in an obscure part of the company who recognizes you do you realize the extent of your reach. It’s a humbling thought.

One excellent practice is to swing through the building once or twice a day checking in with key functions. If certain functions are remote, check in with them via email, a meeting, or a phone call at least once a week. You can address any issues and concerns while they’re small.

The following sections emphasize how your relationship with various roles in the company works. Working with this many different people requires excellent people skills. Look to Chapters 17 and 18 for tips on dealing with varied personalities on a day-to-day basis.

Sales

The overall goal of a sales function is to facilitate the sales process. A sales process is one in which customers come to the conclusion that they should purchase your product and then do so. However, sales isn’t a monolithic function. Breaking down the sales department into its various roles shows how important they are to a product manager:

❯❯ Sales representative: These are the people who actively talk to customers and convince them that they should buy a product. Sales representatives are usually paid at least partly on commission. If they can’t figure out how to sell your product, they’ll sell something else so that they can “make their sales number.”

Your job as a product manager is to make sure that they have a deep understanding of your product and become successful at selling it. Along with your product marketing manager, your job is to make sure that sales representatives have the right information to make the case for your product. Sales presentations, competitive selling sheets, and benefit/feature and pricing comparison charts are a good place to start.

❯❯ Sales engineer or technical sales: For technical products, often someone has to have a highly technical conversation with a customer about creating an elegant solution to a complicated customer problem. This person is typically called a sales engineer, although this title can vary wildly.

Just like the sales representative, the sales engineer explains your product story to the customer. The one big difference is that he might actually using your product at the time running a demonstration. You want to give your sales engineers a much more in-depth briefing about the technical aspects of the product than you give to your sales representatives.

These folks have another important role to play in the life of a product manager: They talk to customers – in many cases, unhappy ones. If you can’t get out and talk to customers directly because they are too far away or you simply don’t have the time to see each unhappy customer, the sales engineer is great source of unsolved customer problems. And unresolved problems are a great source of new product ideas.

❯❯ Sales operations: Sales operations staffers make sure that the back office work is done to make the sale. Part of the nitty-gritty work you do as a product manager is to make sure that sales operations have done a great job of setting up any necessary business systems so that products can easily be sold. These people know what that job entails – in detail. Visit them often in case issues arise. They know how to create workarounds quickly and fix problems in the long term.

Marketing

In the sequence of getting product into customer’s hands, marketing is the next function over from product management and product marketing (see Figure 2-4). Though over time you communicate with the entire company, marketing translates what you do into the overall context of the company messaging for all products and brands.

© 2017, 280 Group LLC. All Rights Reserved.

FIGURE 2-4: The information sequence from product management to sales.

The marketing role includes generating customer demand, helping product marketing and sales respond to competitive moves, taking care of public relations, planning events, and creating material that supports the sales force and channel. You’ll spend many productive and thought-provoking hours with marketing.

Legal

Your involvement with the legal department depends on the type of industry you serve. If you’re in the insurance or medical fields, legal is highly involved with your product specifications. For many product managers, legal only gets involved whenever the company is making a contract with an outside party. For most products, your legal department needs to vet any kind of binding or implied promise made to a customer, partner, contractor, or third-party vendor.

Product development

Product development or, as it is sometimes called, engineering, is the organization that creates your product. Many specialties fall under this one title, including (but certainly not limited to) the following categories:

❯❯ User experience or interface designers

❯❯ Software developers

❯❯ Hardware engineers

❯❯ Quality assurance

Your relationship with product development is key to your success as a product manager. The product development people translate the customer problems that you define into real products that address those needs. How well they do depends on your ability to clearly explain what customers have told you into something that product development can act on. The quality of your communication and influencing skills is critical in making sure that you’re heard well.

One issue that arises is how much direction you provide them. Engineers like to solve problems quickly. In many instances, you want to thoroughly discuss what the customer’s problems and needs are while the engineers want to quickly get to a solution. Your job is to keep them in the problem space long enough so that they really flesh out the ins and outs of the customer problem. Once you believe that everyone on the team has fully understood the customer problem, you can use mind maps and other tools to work through possible solutions. Engineers take the lead once the search for a solution is underway.

Finance

Finance is really focused on keeping the numbers straight and making sure the company is making more than it spends. You work with this department on the following topics:

❯❯ Expenses: How much did your product cost to develop, and how much is the actual cost of the product to product or deliver to customers?

❯❯ Revenue and profits: What is expected revenue, and how much of that can accurately be allocated to profit?

❯❯ Pricing: This area is a combination of the two previous bullets. During a pricing discussion, you need to keep a clear head on the real value of a product to a customer given all the other alternatives. Avoid turning it into a discussion about the amount of money that the company will make per unit. If no one buys the product because the price is too high, the price is wrong no matter how profitable. Chapter 10 has a more detailed discussion on pricing.

Operations

Operations ensures that your product actually reaches your customer with as few hurdles to overcome as possible. You want the process to be friction-free because each hurdle is another opportunity for the sale to stop. The operations department is in charge of mapping out each step, and you need to convince them to implement as simple a process as possible so that your customers can easily buy your product. You may also need to bring in product development to make sure your customer’s journey is mapped out into as few steps as possible.

Here are a couple of examples of ways in which having operations working with development improved customer experiences:

❯❯ Amazon wanted to decrease the required number of steps when purchasing a product from its website. The company eventually developed 1-Click ordering by engaging all aspects of its operations team to speed purchases.

❯❯ When Starbucks began offering Wi-Fi in its coffee shops, logging into the service took two clicks. Today, Starbucks has combined both steps so patrons can accept and connect with one click.

Working with operations is detailed work. You must be prepared to sort out any of the following:

❯❯ Settings in the data tracking systems such as SAP that drive the company.

❯❯ How a part number is constructed to give internal audiences information.

❯❯ The actual process for requesting a part number. Who do you ask? Is there a particular form or way to make this request?

❯❯ Transportation flows of physical product as it moves from manufacturing through a distributor and eventually to a customer.

Each company has its own way of setting up internal systems and processes so that the company runs properly. You need to understand the details of how these systems intersect with your goal of getting products in the hands of customers. In the end, it’s rewarding work to get right, and your operations people will love you for spending the time to get all the details done correctly.

Service and support

Service and support are the unsung heroes of your success. Much like sales engineers, service and support people hear directly from customers – and mostly from unhappy customers (it is rare that customers contact support to tell them how pleased they are.) They provide the after-sales support that keeps your customers satisfied as they use your product. As a product management your interactions with service and support happen for three main reasons:

❯❯ You want to know what problems customers are having with today’s products so you can improve the situation in the next revision or maybe even develop something entirely new, if the problem is big enough.

❯❯ If a lot of customers are calling to complain about a particular issue or bug, service and support are great at collecting data on the problem and letting you know (in no uncertain terms, at times) that the bug needs to be fixed. Be clear with them on any constraints that you have in fixing a product issue. Whatever you do, take their comments seriously.

❯❯ As part of the product launch process, plan training sessions with anyone who supports customers so that they are ready to take calls and answer customer questions on day 1 of product availability.

When your service and support agents are great, they can keep your customers loyal for many years. Take time to visit them, train them, and respect them.

Service and support are part of the whole product offering. The service and support department is often seen as outside the control of the product manager. However, if the department impacts your customer’s happiness and willingness to buy the product, you should speak up and ask for support and service department changes if necessary.