expertise in product management
beyond
the

tac
t
ica
l

ro
le
by Steve Johnson, the tech industry’s product management storyteller
Expertise in product management: beyond the tactical
role
© 2013 Under 10 Templates LLC
Please feel free to post this e-book on your blog or email it to
whomever you believe would benefit from reading it.
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution.
[130309]
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Chapter 1
Product managers are overwhelmed with too
many responsibilities that require too many
areas of expertise. How do product leaders
organize product management for the best
results?
Beyond the
tactical role
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philgerb/532663899/
Some say that product management is a
business function while others say it ’s
primarily technical.
Wikipedia defines product management as “the
combination of product development and product
marketing.” The agile community says product
management represents the business and the market
to the product team. Some teams use product
management and product marketing to mean the same
thing; others say they’re very different.
At a consumer software company, the marketing team
contacted the product manager, asking for screen
images of the current release. (Remember, this is a
consumer product.) The product manager suggested
the marketing team take their own damn screen shots,
thank you very much, but the marketers complained,
“Oh, we don’t know how to use the product.”
(Really? The marketing team doesn’t know the
product? The product was designed for consumers. In
fact, the majority of users are school-age consumers.
Yet the marketing folks can’t use it? Sounds to me like
they need to hire some new marketers.)
At another software company,
the product manager was
writing product specifications,
running beta programs, and
acting as project manager.
She was too busy with the
development team to spend
any time with the rest of the
company. So new product
releases were announced to the company like this:
“The new build goes live tonight.” (Not much of a
launch, eh?) And then chaos ensued as sales people
wanted to know how the marketing group was going to
inform the customers before the next workday. And of
course the marketing people didn’t know anything
about the new release either; they got notified at the
same time as the sales people did. At 5:00pm. On a
Friday. Before a holiday.
A little marketing, a little business, a little
technical support, a lot of project scheduling
—what should a product manager be doing?
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Click&on&the&
text&to&
tweet&it&
When NOT
to
#launch: 5p
m on a
Friday befor
e a
holiday.
“Be the company’s go-to resource for the
product.” The typical definition of product
management simply covers too much. And
product managers are stretched way too thin.
Product managers are expected to be business and
financial experts, product experts, domain and
industry experts, promotional experts, and more.
I led a panel at an agile development conference
while “industry experts” discussed the role of the
product manager. I was shocked—and the audience
was too—that none of the experts on the panel could
agree on the parameters of the role. One said
“business leader,” another said “project manager.”
One said, “The product manager’s job is to do
everything that nobody else wants to do.”
(Yikes!)
Product managers have an impossible goal. To be all
things to all people. To be strategic and tactical. To be
involved in both planning and execution. To be expert
in every aspect of the product.
Product managers become experts based on their
previous job experiences and as a result of their daily
interactions with colleagues and clients. They’re
expert on features and futures, expert on what your
buyers and users are saying about the technology,
and expert on the markets and industries that you
serve.
Many in your organization need that expertise.
And that’s where all the emergencies come from.
Developers and engineers lack knowledge about the
market and the users so they want a product manager
to answer their questions. Marketing professionals
Section 1
The “everything”
role
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lack knowledge about the product and its technology
so they want a product manager to answer their
questions. Sales people lack knowledge about the
product and the industry so they want a product
manager to answer their questions.
T h a t ’s w h y p r o d u c t
management is spread
so thin. Too much to do;
not enough time.
And that’s also why the
r o l e o f p r o d u c t
m a n a g e m e n t i s s o
c o n f u s i n g f o r m o s t
companies. What is the role? Product expert? Market
expert? Both? Something else?
A brief history of product
management
Back in the early 1980s, I joined a company in Dallas.
This was my first vendor experience and it was one of
the best-run software companies I would ever
encounter, something I didn’t appreciate until years
later. This company had a very clear job description
for those who performed business planning for a
single product. The title: product manager.
Now jump to the late 1980s. In his seminal tech
marketing book Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore
recommended two separate product management
titles:
A product manager is responsible for ensuring that
a product gets created, tested, and shipped on
schedule and meeting specifications. It is a highly
internally-focused job, bridging the marketing and
development organizations, and requiring a high
degree of technical competence and project
management experience.
A product marketing manager is responsible for
bringing the product to the marketplace and to the
distribution organization. It is a highly externally-
focused job.
(Sounds like a pretty good clarification of product
management and product marketing.)
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#prodmgmt
is
spread too th
in. Too
much to do;
not
enough time
.
In 1995, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland formalized
the Scrum development methodology. And with it
came yet another product management title: product
owner.
The Product Owner represents the stakeholders
and is the voice of the customer. He or she is
accountable for ensuring that the team delivers
value to the business. Scrum teams should have
one Product Owner.
What is the difference between a product manager
and a product owner? And what about product
marketing manager? After all, they all have ‘product’ in
the name so we assume they must be related.
But when implementing
a g i l e d e v e l o p m e n t
m e t h o d s , f o r m e r l y
b u s i n e s s - f o c u s e d
product managers often
b e c o m e t e c h n o l o g y -
focused product owners.
And we see the product
marketing manager filling the strategic void left when
traditional product managers become technical
product owners.
What do you expect from your product
management team?
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Product mar
keting
often fills th
e strategic
void left by
traditional p
roduct
managers.
In recent years, we’ve seen new definitions
for old titles and many new titles being
created. We’ve got product managers,
product marketing managers, product owners,
business analysts, product strategists,
p roduc t l i ne managers , and por t fo l i o
managers.
There are four types of skills needed in product
management to define and deliver products to market.
Product managers attempt to support the team with all
four types of knowledge but it’s rare to find all of these
capabilities in a single person.
Technology expertise
Technology expertise is about how the product works.
From their daily interactions, product managers pick
up a deep understanding of product and technical
capabilities; they achieve this by playing with the
product, by discussing it with customers and
developers, by reading and reading and reading. For
a technology expert, the product almost becomes their
Section 2
Four types of
skills
- 7 -
personal hobby. They think of themselves as product
experts.
Typical titles: product manager, product owner,
technical product manager, business analyst
Market expertise
Market expertise is a focus on geographic or vertical
markets, either by country or by industry. They know
how business is done in that market. They know the
major players, and the jargon or colloquialisms of the
market. Market experts define themselves by the
market they serve: “I’m a banker” or “I support BRIC.”
Typical titles: industry manager, product marketing
manager, field marketing manager
Domain expertise
Domain expertise is about the discipline your product
supports, such as security, fraud detection, or
education. Domain experts know (and often define)
the standards for the discipline and can explain the
latest thinking in that area. They understand the
problems that your product endeavors to solve,
regardless of the market or industry. And for a domain
expert, your product is merely one way of addressing
the problems of their specialty. Domain experts define
themselves not by the product but by their topic area.
Typical titles: product scientist, principal product
manager
Business expertise
Business expertise is where your traditional business
leader or MBA graduate brings strength. These
experts know the mechanics of business and can
apply that knowledge to your product. A business-
oriented expert knows how to use research to
determine product feasibility, can determine how the
product generates profit with lots of financial analysis
to back it up. Ideally these business skills need to be
combined with one of the other skills or provided as a
support role for the other areas of expertise.
Typical titles: product strategist, product leader,
portfolio manager
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You can now see why product managers struggle in
some areas and breeze through others. Most of us
understand these four
product management
skill sets inherently and
we also realize that it’s
d i f f i c u l t t o f i n d o n e
person with all four skills.
A n d i t e x p l a i n s t h e
difficulty you and your
colleagues sometimes have when connecting with
customers. The sales people who don’t know the
industry jargon or the marketers who seem insensitive
to the customs of different countries or the developers
who don’t understand why a capability is critical to
customers.
Think about the skills you have and the skills
you need for your organization. Consider the
requests you’re getting from development,
marketing, sales, customer support, partners,
and so on. Determine which expertise is
needed to accurately support these requests.
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biggest stru
ggle in
#prodmgmt
is need
for expertise
in too
many areas
.
A vice president at a bank created a method for
detecting fraud. He was recruited by a vendor to
develop a product based around his domain expertise.
But because he also had market expertise of the
industry—he’d been a bank vice president after all—
the sales team hounded him for sales calls. The sales
people said, “I need you to come talk about banking
issues with my buyers.” For nine months he was the
darling of the sales people… until the day he resigned.
His goal was not to be the guy who could “talk bank”
to help generate sales of other products; his goal was
to protect banks from fraud using his algorithm.
When organizing teams, you want to align the different
areas of expertise with the needs of your business.
Rather than organizing teams around products, I
recommend a product management team organized
around a portfolio of products, ideally with staffing in
all four areas of expertise.
We’ll want one domain expert for your specialized
discipline and at least one business expert. We’ll also
need one or more technology experts devoted to each
product or major component in your portfolio. The
person with the most management experience, often
Section 3
Organizing
expertise
- 10 -
the business expert, should lead the team. Seems
logical enough.
And now it gets tricky. For the ideal product
management team, you’ll want to supplement this core
set of experts with an expert for each of the markets
you serve. That’s right: a product marketing manager
or market expert for each major geographic area and
for each vertical industry—at least the ones you care
about.
At first this seems to be a large group of people but
don’t worry; you’ll find many product managers have
more than one area of expertise.
What’s scary isn’t the number of skills
described; what’s really scary is how
many teams are attempting to build
products without the expertise.
The confusion of titles and roles is a
problem for most organizations. We all
have pre-conceived notions of what a
product manager should do. Instead of
thinking “do whatever it takes,” let’s identify the
activities and artifacts that are the responsibility of
your team members. And make sure your team has the
skills necessary to succeed in the job.
Create a team of experts designed to serve
your product and company needs.
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Chapter 2
“I have come to believe that most organizations
need a small number of living documents,
usually fewer than 10.” — Steve Johnson
About me
Speaking at ProductCamp in Toronto
Steve Johnson is the
t e c h i n d u s t r y ’ s
s t o r y t e l l e r a n d a
recognized thought-
leader on product
m a n a g e m e n t ,
marketing, and sales
enablement.
Steve is a popular keynote speaker at technology
forums and author of many articles on product
management and marketing. 
Steve has been working within the high-technology
arena since 1981 with experience in technical, sales,
and marketing management positions at companies
specializing in enterprise and desktop hardware and
software. His market and technical savvy allowed him
to rise rapidly through the ranks from Product Manager
to Chief Marketing Officer. In his various technical
marketing roles, he has launched 22 product offerings.
Prior to Applied Frameworks, Steve was an instructor
for 15 years at Pragmatic Marketing, a Scottsdale,
Ariz.-based training firm focused on software product
management. He was one of the first bloggers on
software product management, and in his tenure at
Pragmatic published more then 1,500 posts from 2002
to 2012. His e-book on software product management
has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.
Steve draws heavily on his marketing and sales
experience in both direct and multi-tier distribution,
while his quick wit adds an element of fun to his
workshops and speeches.
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