Phil Windley is the CIO for the state of Utah
and he has gained some renown as being one of the early pioneers to support and use
an executive level blog. He recently wrote an article about the role
of Product Management in an organization and presented a fairly traditional explanation.
Here is a key paragraph from that article.
Product managers are accountable to executive management for overall product direction,
key decisions, product budget (and sometimes even the complete product P&L), ensuring
that final product meets specifications, and evangelizing product to internal and
external stakeholders. Product managers also have accountability to users for feature
sets, navigation, quality, and overall experience.
I am of the personal opinion that the this is an antiquated view of Product Management.
The demands of genuinely managing the UI and feature sets of a product are huge.
How many people have you ever met that actually understand what makes a good GUI and have
the business savvy to manage a product line P&L (Profit and Loss)?
I suppose those people are out there, but I am betting that they are rare
enough to count on one hand.
I propose that there is a difference between managing the Product Development and
managing the Product Line. Managing the the development requires the
skills to create a readable, accurate, and usable functional specification complete
with use case scenarios.
One of the common complaints from developers is “The Spec Stinks.”
OK, so who should be writing the specs? Who writes your specs? Do they
do a good job?