Comments on Transitioning from User Experience to Product Management

Josh Viney — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:50:12 GMT

Great articles!

As someone who has made the transition, I definitely think you touched on some extremely important points.

I found that my experience as a project manager and as a UX practitioner were invaluable to me when it came to transitioning to the product manager role. Project management taught me how to understand the importance of the team, while working in UX taught me how to understand my customers. Product managers must strive to know their teams, their customers, and their products inside and out to the best of their ability. Without good insight into these three factors, the decision making process gets really scary.

The piece of the puzzle that was most difficult for me during the transition was learning how to prioritize. It can be a very difficult shift in mindset from searching for the ideal UX to having to make a practical decision based on business needs. It’s interesting to note that the prettiest designs and the clearest UX don’t always make for the best converting/selling products, and that fact alone can be hard for some to deal with.

Jeff Lash — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:53:12 GMT

Great points, Livia, but there’s no easy answer, which is why a lot of user experience professionals are looking to go into product management.

If you ever read workplace advice columns—http://www.yourofficecoach.com/ is one that appears in my local paper—you know that sometimes the only advice to a problem at work is essentially to learn to accept it or change your situation.

There are plenty of things you can do to try to deal with bad product manager including: the suggestions we listed above; having an honest discussion with the PM or the PM’s manager; working with others to influence the PM; giving up small issues to get the big wins; working around the PM as much as possible; building a coalition of others to argue your case; gather executive support. My guess, though, is that you’ve tried all of those things already and you’re looking for something else.

Unfortunately, this is probably a case where you either to learn to accept it or change your situation. Accept it doesn’t mean giving up, just accepting that there’s no easy fix and it’s going to be a tough, long battle in many cases. Changing your situation means looking for a new role within the organization or look for a new organization. I think many UX professionals like the organizations they are a part of, they are just looking for a better and easier way of influencing change so that products are developed and managed in the right way, which is why more and more UX practitioners are choosing the former and looking at a product management role as a way of working towards the same end goals, just from a different direction.

Livia Labate — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:53:19 GMT

Good answer Jeff – by ‘bad’ PM I mean PMs that aren’t fullfilling their responsibilities or are trying to butt in on UX professionals responsibilities. And though I expect some of that from the inexperienced PM, that’s really not acceptable from the person hired to a PM job and has been in the position for 5 years. :) You would expect these types of people to just go away by sheer force of selective evolution (product is not yileding expected results, bye bye product manager), but that doesn’t necessarily happen (in an organization that is not well grownded in value metrics, a bad product manager could hide for years!)

Ultimately, the product manager has final say on things, and UX professionals need to respect and expect that. So, the issue is not them being difficult or a communication problem. My question is about a PM doing a poor PM job. While a product manager can fire the UX professional (because of the nature of the relationship: client/service provider), the UX professional shouldn’t have to fire the product manager (either directly – firing them as a client, or indirectly – having them fired by reporting on their behavior to the organization). You can certainly get a product manager fired, but I’m interested in how we can fix the problem. The question is really, gow can we HELP, instead of how can we GET RID of them?

What you mentioned in “Challenges and forces working against you” in the article, is geared towards the product managers – my question is, how can we (UX professionals) help them when they are not cutting it in those areas? Maybe I’m a romantic thinking I can do that, but as a general rule I try to reinforce positive behavior and provide feedback on negative behavior.

I want to hear what your thoughts are, from the product manager perspective, on what a UX professional can do to help when a product managers wants to be an artist and shouldn’t, when they want to get their hands dirty and shouldn’t, when they are going for perfection or the impractical theoretical ideal and shouldn’t, or make recommendations and muscling them through because of their authority and shouldn’t, when they should evangelize the product, but don’t, when they should provide input on strategies for other products within the organization but don’t, when they should focus product strategy on customer and end user needs, but don’t, when they should help ensure user focus throughout entire product, not just the design, but don’t, AND when they should balance the various forces (sales, Marketing/branding objectives, technology strategy, portfolio management, budget management, market trends, competition, business model effects and revenue considerations) and don’t do a good job!.

Too much? ;)

And maybe something that may help frame this conversation, is that I’m interested in a scenario where the UX professionals don’t report to the product manager, so it’s not a problem of managing your boss, but more about managing your client.

Jeff Lash — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 14:55:27 GMT

Great questions, Livia. Not sure I can answer them that well, but I’ll try.

How can UX professionals help support/handle bad PMs: A lot of the ideas described under “work better with your PM now” are a great start, but the real question is how do you know if you’re working with a bad product manager? There are probably specific things—actions, decisions, approaches—that make you think the PM is “bad.” Depending on what those are, your approach may vary. You’d work with a PM who makes bad decisions differently than a PM who makes no decisions.

I tend to think of it this way—there are really few people who are “bad for the sake of being bad,” like the bad guys you see in the movies and on TV. Instead, “bad” people in the workplace are likely not “bad for the sake of being bad,” they may just be uninformed, uneducated, or inexperienced, have a different view on things, or lack the necessary traits, competencies, or skills for the role they are in.

I’m not sure how a PM would handle bad UX professionals, as that’s luckily something I haven’t had an issue with in my career. My gut reaction is to say that if the UX professional really is not doing their job well—bad designs, poorly-run usability tests, poor documentation—then the PM really needs to find another UX person or do their job for them. This is a sticky issue, since in some cases UX reports to the PM and in others UX is part of a central group. Also, I’d question whether the UX professional really is doing a bad job or whether they’re doing their job well and just pushing back against maybe a bad PM ;-)

Livia Labate — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 05:49:33 GMT

Jeff, Chris, I would love to hear your thoughts on how UX professionals can help support/handle bad product managers and how product managers can help support/handle bad UX professionals… :)

Brian Vaughn — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:40:32 GMT

This was a great series of articles. I recently just shifted into a PM-ish role and the topics brought up here really helped me get in the right mind set for what I am not going to be doing vs.my previous developer-ish role. Well written and thought through. I look forward to more articles on PM-ing.

Aside…I just stopped by B&A today via the newsletter and didn’t know the new site design had been rolled out. It looks great!

Anna Rouben — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:51:40 GMT

Thank you for the article; it was an interesting insight into product management world.