The Four Things a Product Manager Brings to the Team
Prepare to contribute by mastering users, data, the business, and the competitive landscape.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Marty Cagan's definition of the baseline preparation a product manager must do to contribute to an empowered team: deeply know the users/customers, be an expert in the data, understand every part of the business, and know the competitive landscape and industry. This knowledge is what the PM uniquely brings that designers and engineers don't have.
Origin
From Marty Cagan of the Silicon Valley Product Group, on Lenny's Podcast.
Core principles
- 01An empowered team needs someone who brings user, data, business, and market knowledge — that's the PM.
- 02Product owner is an administrative role, not a substitute for a skilled product manager.
- 03The business-knowledge dimension is the hardest and the one stakeholders judge you on.
- 04The single biggest way empowered teams fall down is an ill-equipped product manager.
How to run it
- 1
Know the users and customers
Really get to know the users and customers as the first pillar of preparation.
- 2
Be an expert in the data
Master how the product is used, how that's changed over time, and both the sales analytics and user analytics.
- 3
Learn the different parts of the business
Understand how the product is marketed, sold, paid for, and monetized, plus any compliance, regulatory, privacy, and security issues, and earn stakeholders' trust that you understand the issues.
Pro tip Convince stakeholders that if there's ever a question, you'll bring them a prototype they can review to make sure it's okay.
Watch out This is usually the hardest of the four and the one your stakeholders judge you on.
- 4
Know the competitive landscape
Know the competitors, the industry, and the trends.
In the wild
Cagan cites a 1995 theory that as a company grows and stops innovating, sales, marketing and finance people get celebrated and promoted into leadership, so good product people leave for companies that value product.
→ It explains why product quality decays at large companies — and why the PM must actively bring product knowledge the rest of the team lacks.
Common mistakes
Relying on product owners instead of product managers
Product owner is just an administrative role and such people almost never have the skills to be a product manager, leaving the empowered team without the knowledge it needs.
Coming to the team ill-equipped on the four dimensions
An under-prepared PM is the single biggest area where empowered teams fall down, because the team's solutions depend on the PM bringing user, data, business, and market knowledge.
Is it for you?
Best for
New or transitioning product managers preparing to contribute to an empowered product team.
Not ideal for
Organisations that only want an administrative product-owner role rather than an empowered PM.
From the transcript
“the first thing is they have to really get to know the users and customers”
“the third thing is and this is usually the hardest one and it's the one that your stakeholders will judge you on is you have…”
“that is the single biggest area empowered teams fall down the product manager is ill-equipped”
From the episode
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