Comments on Transitioning from User Experience to Product Management

Chris Baum — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 15:51:52 GMT

Hi John,

I like that idea! I would think that it is most likely (at this point) to manifest as a VP/SVP of Product Management that originally came from UX background. That person would do much of what we do as individual product managers – bring insight of how users experience our products into the development of the entire portfolio of products (and, thus, knit together multiple user experiences). Seems like back to the future, no?

One thing we don’t mention here is that the progression through product management could possibly be part of a path to the executive offices. In effect, that would be taking UX to CEO, rather than CXO.

Anyone else have ideas?

John Zapolski — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 19:07:29 GMT

*this part dropped from the previous comment*

...I wonder if there’s a role for a “president of the user experience”, a user experience manager, that manages the portfolio of products and services that make up something like the iPod system. Individual product managers manage, say, the nano, iTunes music store, iTunes video, peripherals, etc. and report into a user experience manager that allocates resources across the products according to the user experience strategy. What do y’all think?

John Zapolski — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 19:06:56 GMT

Back in the old days, outside of Silicon Valley, “user experience” for many people used to refer to the system that surrounds the product, including services, customer support, distribution points including the retail channel, etc. Somewhere along the way, user experience became synonomous with user interface design. That confused me at first—I always thought it was weird that user experience would be seen as an aspect of the product, rather than the product being seen as an aspect of the experience. The argument for product managers reporting into user experience managers always made complete logical sense to me, but it never matched reality. Since the reality was that UX managers were UI designers, it made more sense in practice for “user experience” people to report to product managers rather than the other way around.

But now that we’re seeing renewed interested in systems design (eg, Peterme’s Stop Designing Products

David Shen — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 15:51:31 GMT

I agree that a natural path for designers is to run the product itself.

I made the transition to product management type activities by learning about all the disciplines peripheral to design, but critical for product design. These are engineering (software or otherwise; for physical products, it would be product design/mechanical engineering), sales (advertising, online and offline, business models), project management (various methods of whipping people onto a schedule), and, of course, traditional product management which is still a growing field in internet product development due to the speed at which products need to launch.

If you are thinking about making the change, I would encourage you to learn as much as you can about the other disciplines, learn enough about them to be dangerous (ha! a menace to those who would trust you with that knowledge!), and gain experience in working in those areas if possible.

Nothing is better than working in an area of expertise. It gives you first hand experience dealing with the issues and gives you street cred to those who look for you for direction in those areas, and also to respect you if you need to make a call in someone else’s area of responsibility.

Chris Baum — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 09:48:16 GMT

Thanks for your comments, Michael and Madonnalisa.

Matt – After part 2 of the article, I believe your question will change slightly. Let’s revisit after that gets posted next week!

Madonnalisa G. Chan — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:16:15 GMT

Thank you for sharing your experiences in the article. I’m so glad to see this topic start making the rounds in our profession. At some point I can see many in our profession make the gradual transition to either product management or even start their own businesses. It’s a very natural progression as long as we are open-minded to seeing the big picture and learn how a business is run.

Matt Gregg — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 01:46:06 GMT

I dig the article definitely agree with your comment about PMs being as close or closer to their customers and market (or they should be) in a lot of cases. In organizations where UX practicioners work across products/markets or as consultants and don’t have the in-depth domain experience, it amazes me UXers would assume otherwise.
Wondering which role do you see making decisions about the design/ideation process in terms of research questions to answer and number/medium/fidelity of prototypes which facilitate the internal and external conversations/vision?

Michael Beavers — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 10:42:14 GMT

Very interesting article…and reflective of the fact that UX professionals are gaining more and more clout as good business thinkers—because it simply makes good business sense to involve the user in design of a new product.

Even at product companies like Yahoo! and Google, you will see a variation of product teams and their emphasis they place on user input and research. What UX professionals like researchers and IDs is that there is often a huge linkage (think overall meta data strategy, ad serving, eyeball ownership, etc.) between products that must be taken into account.

The core challenge of a product manager (and probably what separates the wheat from the chaff) are those who can diplomatically listen and advocate all sides of an interaction decision, look for the common areas between business needs (defined by the site or feature owner) and what the users actually care about interacting with, and make smart decisions about tools, features, and content.

Can’t wait to see part II!

Mark Drasutis — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 01:37:03 GMT

Thanks for the article, and strangely one of my first jobs at my current employer was to, I quote: “go find out what the hell it is the product management team do”, which did make me think, ‘what the hell have I taken on here’, and as a company we have now moved too far towards classic product management. Yet, the team I am curently in are now pushing the user and consumer experience back into the mix, placing the user back at the table … as occasionally product management, as a discipline, can get tied down in the documentation, process and development cycles, anf forget to deliver what was originally the optimal user experience.

Will read with interest the next chapter, and also reference some of the books/articles quoted here … perhaps this will help in the ‘crusade’ to get the user back at the table! ... and help me in what next step to take.

Paul Sherman — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:25:38 GMT

Very enjoyable article! I really like your description of the product manager’s role and responsibilities. I just posted an article at UXMatters that touched on some of the same points, in particular the conflict between product management and user experience. I don’t want to shill so I won’t post a link. But here’s title of the UXMatters article: Connecting Cultures, Changing Organizations: The User Experience Practitioner As Change Agent.

Chris Baum — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:56:49 GMT

That’s a great question, Cristos. We definitely think so, but in most organizations it seems easier to place it on the shoulders of one person, much like the coach on a sports team.

At my current startup (of about 30 people), that’s much easier to attempt than, say, at IBM with hundreds, maybe thousands, of people contributing to the execution and operation of a product or service line of business. However, even then, I’d love to see IBM try such a program.

Stories like this one from strategy+business seem to offer promise that larger organizations might start to act more collectively:

http://www.strategy-business.com/press/enewsarticle/enews…

Thanks for the comment!

Cristos Lianides-Chin — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 19:01:28 GMT

Definitely an interesting article, Jeff. I look forward to reading the second part. It seems a little curious, that we always put the “visionary” person in the role of project manager. Has anyone seen a sustainable business structure where the visionary is accountable only for the vision, and the people who carry it out (developers, designers, etc.) are equally accountable for the final creation?

Teresa Torres — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 02:27:06 GMT

Jeff, great article. I recenlty was facing a decision between a UED role and a PM role and your advice then was invaluable. It turns out, despite choosing the UED role, I ended up doing a bit of both. I look forward to part II.

Jeff Lash — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 22:04:41 GMT

I’ve got a list of good product management resources—including books and blogs—on my website: http://www.goodproductmanager.com/resources/

The PDMA has a great list on their site as well: http://www.pdma.org/bookstore/books/ ... Most are focused on product management overall, so some may be more or less appropriate for technical, software, or web-based product management.

ji kim — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 08:32:46 GMT

any good books you recommend about product management?