When asked about for advice about product management, I almost always preface my answer with “well, it depends” likely on one or more of the following
- Company size, type, stage, culture
- Manager, team
- Product type, stage
- Your background, work experience
A good product culture is a confluence of these factors, and then some.
Ken Norton wrote a wonderful post about this recently, which led me to deliberate the question in a more nuanced form.
What makes for a good product culture for a product manager?
Here are five questions to consider as a product manager when evaluating product culture either at the company you currently work for or the company you want to work for. I will note that this is a lot harder to gauge when you aren’t actually working at the company, but asking the hiring manager pointed questions can give you some insight.
- Who decides what features are built? What is the process by which this is decided?
There exist companies where feature backlogs are driven by engineering teams, sales teams, design teams or even product teams. For selfish reasons, I prefer organizations where the product team is the decision maker. A successful product team consults with other cross-functional teams to understand technical debt, gather input from customers, and improve user experience in order to build a solid roadmap. The process itself should be collaborative but not consensus-seeking. - Do engineers and marketers respect or merely tolerate product managers?
It is a red flag when PMs in an organization are held at arm’s length, and aren’t welcomed to sprint planning or launch preparation meetings. When people start going around PMs to avoid interacting with them, it indicates a lack of trust that is a symptom of larger problems. A bad PM apple or two from the past can ruin things for every PM that comes after unless there is a conscious effort to fix culture. - Do product and engineering teams deliver items on the roadmap as planned? Is there a delta between what is committed and what is delivered?
In my experience, it is pretty common for PMs to over-promise and under-deliver while engineers under-promise and over-deliver. This is a healthy state of affairs within a small margin. When large differences emerge between what the product team is asking for versus what is getting shipped, this to me is a cause for concern. There could be many reasons for this, including a breakdown in communication between engineering and product teams, the lack of a shared vision, poor product definition and requirements, and so on. - Are product managers able to get things done without escalating up?
Having to loop in your manager or a senior product lead every now and then to back you up is normal. If you have to pull rank every time you need something from your engineering or marketing teams, then you should really question why this is happening. - Are product managers territorial about being the voice of the customer?
The work of a PM can sometimes be less than tangible, which is why I have seen PMs in some organizations gatekeeping access to customers. By limiting who gets to interact with customers, PMs can feel like they’re delivering some unique value. This is a sad state of affairs. Giving engineers and designers the ability to interact with customers ensures that everyone building the product is truly invested in understanding and solving customer pain points. Any deviation from this hints at underlying issues.
Finally, it is important to remember that no company or product team is perfect. Product culture is constantly evolving, and with good leadership, culture issues can be remedied. The best you can do is critically assess the good and the bad to make informed decisions.