Learning from explanations of Product Manager

I said in my last post that I don’t think what I have been doing as Product Manager for the last year really marries up with what people think Product Managers do. So while I feel guilty I don’t have imposter syndrome because a) my books alone show I know what I’m talking about, b) I’m told I’m doing a good job.

So, what should a Product Manager be doing?

The good news is that while there is some agreement (its about the product, stupid) there is less consensus on exactly what.

That itself creates a problem, I remember Gabriel Steinhardt of Blackblot pointing out a whole back that the role sometimes becomes a dumping group for work that should be done elsewhere. There are several reasons why that is still true.

First off the role is poorly understood so is open to interpretation. Second, it can be hard to pin the role down to what it is. Third, Product Manager have fingers in many pies so the casual observer they see a product manager doing different things and thinks they do it all: discussing requirements, presenting strategy, planning or working with an engineering team and more. Then there are marketing discussion, and sometimes sales calls or customer visits. (Check out my prelude in Art of Agile Product Ownership.)

Not Project Management

So in an effort to untangle this I went on a search. I started with Wikipedia

“A product manager (PM) is a professional role that is responsible for the development of products for an organization, … Product managers own the product strategy behind a product (physical or digital), specify its functional requirements, and manage feature releases. Product managers coordinate work done by many other functions (like software engineers, data scientists, and product designers), and are ultimately responsible for product outcomes.” Wikipedia, September 2025 (my emphasis)

That is quite broad, and although Wikipedia notes “Not to be confused with Project manager” the mention of “coordinating work with other function” itself adds that confusion. The last bit is the part that resonates with me most: “responsible for product outcomes” – that fits in with my outlook and my enthusiasm for (aka OKRs).

Looking again at this definition I can’t help but think that plenty of Project Managers (and Delivery Leads, and even Scrum Masters) would also claim to managing releases, co-ordinating work and responsibility for outcomes. It seems to me that exactly what a Product Manager does will depend on what supporting roles exist: without a Delivery Manager they may need to co-ordinate workers, without a BA or User Researcher they may need to spend a lot more time with users/customers, and while a Product Manager may own the strategy it is also possible that they are give it and told to execute.

Inbound & outbound

Blackblot was next up, they have a nice little video explainer which situates the role within their product management framework. To summarise, Blackblot see the role as Product Planning (what does the customer want/need, something I call inbound marketing) and Product Marketing (telling people the product is here, or outbound marketing to me.)

That is not the same as Wikipedia but its not too far away.

Lifecycle

Next I fished out my Product Manager training manuals from the Pragmatic Marketing course from years ago. While Pragmatic acknowledge a lot of work for the Product Manager the course itself was heavily oriented towards requirements and understanding external customer. Pragmatic Marketing are now Pragmatic Institute and on their website they offer this summary:

“product management oversees a product’s development and life cycle. The ultimate goal is to create and deliver a product that meets customers’ needs and generates revenue for the company.” Pragmatic Institute, September 2025

Again, similar but different to both Wikipedia and Blackblot. I really like the reference to “life cycle”. It is important to acknowledge that product management doesn’t just happen at creation: it should be there for the life of the product. It will change over time – new products have different priorities to retiring ones – but it still needs to be there.

Having said that, the “life cycle” reference is a little vague. True, this is not the only thing on their website so I shouldn’t quibble. If I look at the training they offer I get the feeling that for Pragmatic still emphasise the customer requirements side.

Celebrity

Finally, Silicon Valley Product Group: if Product Management has a superstar it is SVPG founder Marty Cagan. Here I found:

“In the product model, product managers are a key member of a cross-functional, durable team that is empowered to solve problems in a way customers love, yet also works for their business.” SVPG, Sept 2025

Like Blackblot SVPG are situating the Product Manager within a framework. While this makes sense it also leaves one asking “What if the company doesn’t use that framework?” In other posts I find SVPG are not always kind about other frameworks, or absent frameworks. The attitude can feel a bit elitist, “If you aren’t following this framework you are not doing it properly.” While that might be true it isn’t very helpful.

The same SVPG post goes on to lists things the Product Manager should not be doing. Some of these, like project management and requirements gathering seem contrary to what others say or imply. (The whole project/product manager/management issue is worth a post in its own right if I could only work out how to distill the issues.)

Where now?

So where does this leave us? What does a Product Manager do?

There is something to like in all these definitions and there is common agreement around its product centricity (if there wasn’t it would be very problematic!).

Product centricity is something about ensuring valuable outcomes which meet needs and deliver value. While some of these definitions note that there are multiple groups to deliver to (e.g. users and buyers) others emphasis customers. This begs the question: how do you define a customer? and what about internal “customers” who don’t really have choice?

Now if we agree Product Management is about ensuring valuable outcome we still haven’t answered the “What do they do?” question. So I go back: how they deliver those outcomes is going to depend on where the product is in the life cycle, how the organisation is set up (structure? frameworks?) and what, if any, supporting roles there are.

If I’m a Product Manager in company following one of the patent frameworks, supported by Business Analysts, Marketeers, User Researchers, with a Delivery Manager and Scrum Master then my job is going to be very different to if… I am at a small company with random management, no analysts or researchers, teams lead by coders who think they know what they are doing and no advertising people.

But in both cases, I should be delivering valuable outcomes, if I can’t persuade the company to adopt a framework and hire people to help me.

I’m hoping that before long I can come up with a model of what I think Product Managers do, watch this space.

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