The root of it all

There are so many names for the product management team – from strategic planning all the way to “the Business”. In a strange way I think the business resonates quite well considering that the role of any PM team is to define the product strategic direction in order to maximize the value users get from it. In order to do this the PM team has to be both customer centric and customer facing as a great product will always solve real customer problems and a good product manager won’t just ask customers what features they would want build nor will they just ask customers what problems they have (this is quite often) but they will work with customers and dig deeper to identify their goals that created the problems in the first place which customers want to fix through the functionality they believe needs to be built ( I know a long chain reaction).

Your role as a Product Manager is to identify the goal and provide the right solution that will help customers reach their goals. Clearly you have to identify the solution that would solve said problem for a market or at least a subset of customers (think RICE when prioritizing).

To put this into perspective in the world of product management people use the Ford example: where Ford built a car but if he would of asked customers what they want they would of said a faster horse or a six legged horse – so we have the ask but also the problem – how to move faster. The goal however was cheap, reliable and fast transport – exactly what ford offered. Think that a faster transport can also mean a ligher carriage.

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