Skypawalker's Mindscape

Product Management Excellence

Based on Ben Horowitz's "The Hard Thing About Hard Things"

Core Identity

A good product manager is the CEO of the product.

  • Knows the market, the product, the product line, and the competition extremely well and operates from a strong basis of knowledge and confidence.
  • Takes full responsibility and measures themselves in terms of the success of the product.
  • They are responsible for right product/right time and all that entails.

Accountability vs Excuses

Good product managers know the context going in (the company, revenue, funding, competition, etc.), and they take responsibility for devising and executing a winning plan (no excuses).

Bad product managers have lots of excuses:

  • Not enough funding
  • The engineering manager is an idiot
  • Microsoft has ten times as many engineers working on it
  • I'm overworked
  • I don't get enough direction

Time Management and Focus

Good product managers don't get all of their time sucked up by the various organizations that must work together to deliver the right product at the right time. They don't take all the product team minutes; they don't project manage the various functions; they are not gofers for engineering.

They are not part of the product team; they manage the product team.

Technical Relationship

Engineering teams don't consider good product managers a "marketing resource." Good product managers are the marketing counterparts to the engineering manager.

Defining What vs How

Good product managers crisply define the target, the "what" (as opposed to the "how"), and manage the delivery of the "what."

Bad product managers feel best about themselves when they figure out "how."

Communication Excellence

Good product managers:

  • Communicate crisply to engineering in writing as well as verbally
  • Don't give direction informally
  • Gather information informally
  • Create collateral, FAQs, presentations, and white papers that can be leveraged by salespeople, marketing people, and executives

Bad product managers complain that they spend all day answering questions for the sales force and are swamped.

Proactive vs Reactive

Good product managers anticipate the serious product flaws and build real solutions.

Bad product managers put out fires all day.

Strategic Positioning

Good product managers take written positions on important issues:

  • Competitive silver bullets
  • Tough architectural choices
  • Tough product decisions
  • Markets to attack or yield

Bad product managers voice their opinions verbally and lament that the "powers that be" won't let it happen. Once bad product managers fail, they point out that they predicted they would fail.

Focus Areas

Good product managers focus the team on revenue and customers.

Bad product managers focus the team on how many features competitors are building.

Execution Reality

Good product managers define good products that can be executed with a strong effort.

Bad product managers define good products that can't be executed or let engineering build whatever they want (solve the hardest problem).

Value Creation

Good product managers think in terms of:

  • Delivering superior value to the marketplace during product planning
  • Achieving market share and revenue goals during the go-to-market phase

Bad product managers get very confused about the differences among delivering value, matching competitive features, pricing, and ubiquity.

Problem-Solving Approach

Good product managers decompose problems.

Bad product managers combine all problems into one.

Media Relations

Good product managers:

  • Think about the story they want written by the press
  • Ask the press questions
  • Assume members of the press and analyst community are really smart
  • Err on the side of clarity

Bad product managers:

  • Think about covering every feature and being absolutely technically accurate with the press
  • Answer any press question
  • Assume journalists and analysts are dumb because they don't understand the subtle nuances of their particular technology
  • Never even explain the obvious

Self-Direction and Discipline

Good product managers:

  • Define their job and their success
  • Send their status reports in on time every week, because they are disciplined

Bad product managers:

  • Constantly want to be told what to do
  • Forget to send in their status reports on time, because they don't value discipline

Referred in

Product Management Excellence