Is Product management a skill?

3/27/2013

Most of you are probably familiar with skills & expertise on LinkedIn. Among the many skills to choose from is product management. Being a product management professional, I have posted that on my profile and have been widely endorsed. But I was surprised to see that some of my colleagues who are recruiters, CFOs, VCs, sales people, etc. posted product management as one of their skills. That got me thinking, does one grasp what product management really is?

I strongly believe that Product management is not a skill, but rather a profession and as such is comprised of many skills such as: market research, market segmentation, competitive analysis, product planning, defining requirements and more to name but a few.
So why do so many other professionals list product management as one of their skills?
In my opinion it stems from not knowing what product management really is and confusing management tasks with product management.
A recruiter is managing job openings, a CFO manages the company’s finance, a VC manages investments in companies, sales people manage sales accounts, but that is not product management.

A product manager identifies needs in a market and designs* a solution (which can be a service, a product or a combination of both) to address those needs. The need is common among a particular segment of the market and the solution addresses that need.

So to all my contacts, colleagues and friends who claim to have product management skills, take a good look at your professional skills & expertise and ask yourself, does my title include the words product manager? If not, then you probably should not display that as one of your skills.

*The word design means coming up with an idea of how to address a need.

8 Comments

Geoffrey Anderson link

3/27/2013 09:39:26 am

Love it. It seems that Product Management has become trendy. From the self-styled "product guys" to people who think that they have mad skills because a customer request came through them first (hint to sales: I have never heard a new feature request the first time from your lips), I think it has gone too far.

I roll my eyes so often reading profiles on linked in, that I am beginning to wonder if they have jumped the shark.

Thanks for writing this.

Roland Nutter

3/29/2013 01:07:52 am

I am glad that others feel the same way and you are absolutely correct in your statement that it is a set of skills, not just one. Other professions may have skills that overlap but that does not mean you can claim to be or have Product Management skills, just as I do not claim accounting as a skill. Yes, I have taken classes on it, use it in my personal finances and even in BC generation, but I do not claim it as a skill I have.

Jim Byrd

3/29/2013 04:27:30 am

I couldn't agree more. And I think this is one of the reasons "Endorsements" will be going away in the near future. Although "Recommendations" have been compared to references (nobody gets a bad one), at least some time and thought was required to write one. Simply clicking a button to endorse someone's real or perceived skill is not indicative of one's level of proficiency in, or accomplishments with that skill.

Kittur Nagesh link

3/31/2013 02:30:10 pm

I agree with the article and the sentiments expressed. Compounding the problem is the lack of definition of product management and lack of clairty on the full scope of the product manger's role.

I have found that even within hi-tech companies, the scope of product managers varies significantly. For example, at Cisco, where I spent a dozen years in numerous product management roles, the Product Manager or PLM or Director of Product Management was responsible for all activities from initial concept (to solve a customer problem or to capitalize on market disruption or create a new category...). In other companies, product managers take an excessively inward view of defining requirements and working with engineers during the design and implementation stage. I also heard that "Program Managers" in some hi-tech companies did a lot of these tasks.

Often Product Managers act as mini-CEOs for the role, which is what makes the job exciting. With this type of comprehensive scope, Product managers guided the work of product marketing teams as the company scaled the product/solution offering to broader market or different verticals. I have always viewed product management roles as the most fun as it covers all the way from concept incubation, business analysis, market and product requirements, road map, working with engineering, pricing, launching, external events, AR/PR, EOL, ... In short, manage the full life cycle.

Nagesh

Brett Steingo link

4/2/2013 01:55:21 am

Agreed. You can't really leave "Product Management" off because then you will be overlooked for Product Management jobs, conferences, speaking slots etc but it is a very odd 'skill' description. It's a bit like a cardiologist calling his/her skill "medicine" or even "doctoring" :)

What a lot of people are expecting from a large number of Product Management endorsements is someone who will "run around taking care of everything to do with the product, fielding all problems, cleaning up all the mess the previous 'Product Manager' created with a nice smile on his/her face!"

Goran Begic

4/4/2013 01:28:53 am

Nice topic. Thanks for bringing this up. My experience was similar to what Kittur described. I'd say it's both - a profession and a skill. For many of us it's a profession, or a role within an organization, but we are not the only ones doing product mangement. In fact the big challenge with "it" is that it is very easy for pretty much anybody to do a poor job at it, including us who have the title. Been there, done that... If there is one item owned by a product manager it's the roadmap (a realistic one, not a ppt dream). Having a roadmap, owning it and adding value with it is a skill.

Steven Haines link

4/4/2013 02:24:21 am

This is why I write books about Product Management, and will continue to do so until these conversations are directed to the enhancement of the profession, instead of the day-to-day impressions of those who continually want to reinvent the wheel.

Ruth Wasser

4/4/2013 01:15:23 pm

Nice article Sarela!

Is Product management a skill?

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