Making It Right: Product Management For A Startup World

by Rian Van Der Merwe

The truth is that, to be effective, the product management role for a particular product or area can’t be fulfilled by multiple people. It is essential for the product manager to see the whole picture — the strategic vision as well as the implementation details — to help them make good decisions about the product. If the knowledge of different parts of the process is in the heads of different people, the holistic view goes away, taking all the value out of the role.

PM can have the best strategy, and be brilliant at execution, but without the ability to work well with people and get them to rally around a common cause, they will fail.

Hello, I’m A Product Manager Introducing a product management layer into an organization that’s used to working without it is tricky. If you do it wrong it can become a political nightmare and end up ruining your chances of shipping anything worthwhile. You might have the best of intentions, but there is always the danger that the only thing people will think when they look at a product manager is, “Hey, I used to be responsible for that stuff, buddy!”

Arriving at a company as a new (or sometimes, the first) product manager can be daunting. Product management is usually introduced in an organization once there is such a high level of internal enthusiasm and chaos that the leaders aren’t sure how to handle it any more. And then everyone looks to the product manager to “manage stuff.”

This feels more exciting than scary!