garry's posthaven

I'm loving all the slide decks you've been posting.

Space pens are really cool. I didn't realize they were the result of a $1M research program. Apparently it's an urban legend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen

Garry,

Thanks so much for your post and your kind words! Glad you liked my PM talk. I've worked in product management for 18 years and have been giving presentations for 4 years now. This is my latest and greatest deck (older ones at http://bit.ly/PMtalks). The UI Design Iceberg is one of my favorite slides, too :-)

Cheers,
Dan Olsen
CEO, YourVersion
http://www.yourversion.com

I think the line on that slide you pulled out should also include something like "What great engineers think about"

In all these slide decks about product design and management, why are developers an afterthought? Why are they separated from "knowing the market and the customer"

Man, that sorta stuff pisses me off. I'm an engineer, primarily. But I designed Posterous with my needs and my market's needs in mind.

Great teams have engineers that can think like a designer and do the right thing, and don't need to be told what to do by a PM. No one in an org should be separated from their market.

Engineers are just generally disconnected in a lot of traditional PM / dev / designer orgs. I agree it sucks, but in larger orgs you just can't find or keep people who can do all of the above, which is why the specialization happens. Ultimately it hurts the product because people are too specialized (e.g. "I only do X.") and/or teammates don't understand one another anymore.

And maybe that's why large teams fail so frequently and so severely.

I think engineers are disconnected for one of two reasons:

I really don't think these slides have anything to do with who should be doing what. The main gist of the presentation is relevant no matter who does it and what their title is -- a) how to decide what to build, b) how to design and usability test it it, and c) how to measure/test and use metrics to iterate / win.

very true. but slide 8 definitely seems to indicate a disconnect between the roles as opposed to just indicating it needs to be done

Yeah, Slide 8 isn't quite right. But I'm ok with disagreeing with one or two slides out of 84.

What do you think, Dan? ;-)

I'm glad my slides on product management spurred such a good discussion :-)

When I first saw Garry's post and looked at the UI Iceberg slide (before there were any comments), I actually noted the absence of the word "developers" myself. I'll add it next time I use this slide.

As Garry pointed out, my talk does not say what developers should or shouldn't be doing. It's focused on describing what the person with responsibility for the product management function should be doing to be successful, regardless of that person's job title (i.e., the decisions that need to be made). I believe the best product outcomes happen when there is good collaboration between product managers, designers, and developers (which I usually refer to as "the triumvirate"), as reflected in my Venn diagram on slide 25.

Slide 8 is not saying that developers shouldn't have exposure to the market. It's saying that the product management role is the role primarily responsible for bringing the market knowledge to the org. Even if an org doesn't have anyone with the title product manager, somebody in the org still better be in touch with the market if they want to have a successful product. If it makes you feel better, on Slide 8, feel free to just add arrows connecting the development team to the market. By the way, your point doesn't just apply to developers; I think a company benefits when every role at the company is customer-centric.

On the points about why some engineers are "disconnected", I agree that you tend to see it more in bigger companies. But I think the biggest factor is how customer-centric the company's DNA is. I've also had the pleasure of working at a very customer-centric company with strong cross-functional collaboration (Intuit). On the Quicken team, in addition to PMs and designers, developers, QA, and even documentation would all passionately share their opinions and good ideas to contribute to a better product. (It's worth noting that Apple and Intuit are both larger companies).

Hopefully you found enough goodness in the other 83 slides. If not, I recommend finding a PM and a designer and trying to hug it out ;-)

I guess given my experience at Apple and seeing how well that org is run by engineers, I have never held the *position* of a PM in high regard.

I agree, you need someone to do that role. You need someone who understands the customers and the market. But I hope I never work in an org where that's a dedicated position.

A bunch of PMs will throw out ideas and then go get beer. Engineers and designers can actually build stuff.

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