Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Jeff Lash

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.

Jeff Lash — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 22:03:41 GMT

“Traditional” product managers are responsible for every aspect of their product—the features and functionality, the design, the production, the distribution, the pricing. So, in that sense, they are responsible for the entire “user experience” associated with the product.

As Chris mentions, many companies have a person (or, in larger organizations, several people, often at different levels) responsible for portfolio management across the products. In these cases, it’s much less about individual releases and features/functionality and much more about creating a roadmap and vision for the system.

In other organizations, there are people responsible for the “horizontal” aspects of products—those elements that are common to many products, such as search or login for a suite of web applications. These product managers are responsible for “internal” products or services (e.g. Search Product Manager), which warrants a different approach and scope than a product manager responsible for a customer-facing product but shares many of the same fundamental responsibilities. In this case, the “service” product manager’s role is to serve his customers—the other product managers responsible for the customer-facing products—as well as the customers and users of those products. This focus on the shared elements and shared experience can help reduce reinventing the wheel, improve consistency across a product suite, and overall create a more cohesive user experience strategy.

Jeff Lash — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 06:27:56 GMT

Austin—First, thanks for the plugs and glad you like our blogs. Second, thanks for the comments—you’ve brought up some good issues that are worth discussing and clarifying.

Without getting too much into semantics, I think your first comment is really about what “responsibility” means. I wholeheartedly agree that “systemic ‘business’ realities … should be at the forefront of [everyone’s] minds.” The technical writer should care about the overall product’s success and the competition and the pricing and marketing plan and everything else—but at the end of the day, they are “responsible” for making sure their part (documentation, content) is aligned with those overall goals. Sure, if you’ve got a team of 2-3 people, you don’t split up responsibilities as much, but in most organizations you’ve got at least a dozen people if not many, many more.

The best way to balance these is to have shared goals and individual responsibilities. Everyone working on a product, regardless of their role, should have the same goals—revenue, usage, on time / under budget, etc. Those need to be aligned across the team. However, each individual has an area of responsibility. I don’t think we’re “ghettoizing” UX designers by saying that they are “responsible” for the UI and user experience—that’s the deliverable that UX designers need to produce! Software developers need to produce working code. If you’ve got UX designers and software developers who are spending more time on “overall market feedback, specific marketing plans, competition, technology, profit and loss, and resources available to the product,” than their main deliverables, you’ve got a problem.

Also, regarding your comment that “Good leaders (and good team members in general) communicate vision in a way so that it is shared, so that everyone involved shares, owns, and collaborates on that vision,” I again agree vehemently. That goes back to the shared goals that I described above. The vision needs to be owned by the team but articulated and led by the product manager. The PM needs to make sure that everyone understands what the goal is and why, and make sure that focus does not drift from that vision. It would be nice if the PM could communicate the vision once and then be guaranteed that the end product would align with that vision, but in reality you do need a “shepherd” to reinforce the vision and strategy on a regular basis and make sure that the tactical decisions being made support that vision and strategy.

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 ;-)

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.