The Product Period

On the one hand you had the project management duties of shepherding development from one cross-functional organization to another, the delineating and tracking of minute tasks, and the analyzing and reporting of results. On the other hand a PM was supposed to be a business strategist and innovator, planning the next feature to be built, and helping to architect and integrate that feature into the product. At a glance you can see that this should be two separate

strategy and product roadmap. The 2000’s was also the decade when lean processes and techniques emerged for these planning purposes. They were honed by founders like Eric Ries and many of them were crystalized into teachable concepts in his blog and inTLS.

Some people with a background at more traditional manufacturing companies found their way to technology, but somehow tech has remained fairly insular. Many of the leadership of today were the individual contributors (IC’s) of yesterday. Engineers le  their dual-monitor desks for the proverbial executive suites. (I say “proverbial” because many companies, and most where I’ve worked, have an open floor plan where the CEO has the same space and desk as anyone else. Despite its faults, the technology industry is more meritocratic and less stratified than most industries.) Despite having a roster of homegrown talent, companies needed a new type of specialist.

The professional role of Product Manager (PM) was formed. When you look at the notable individuals who have held the role, you o en see that people transitioned from engineering or other specializations. This was because, like design, there was a new need but no one yet had formal training to fill it. And like design, the PM role was a forced hybridization.

The best PM’s I’ve ever worked with can do both, but even for someone with both capabilities, accomplishing it in parallel is a tall task.

The product period brought us new roles — the PM and then the product designer. It necessitated new frameworks for product planning and development. Agile methods improved productivity and lean methods broadened our possibilities. The Product Period brought us to a new level of beneficial abstraction on top of the science and engineering of the preceding phases. Beyond the digitization of the analog world, new companies and products were created to go beyond what you could do before. Many were analogous but few were facsimile. These were digital-only products that had no physical counterparts. As such, there was new value creation and growth at unheard-of speed and scale.