Should There Be ‘Permanent’ Product Managers?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Product Management  

Many changes are happening within product management. It’s a highly dynamic discipline right now in many industries. And all of those changes combine to raise some interesting questions around how product-focused projects are delivered.

Should these shifts in product management approaches result in having permanent product delivery PMs in order to improve delivery of successful projects, and products? Should project managers be assigned not to a particular product initiative, but rather to a product—managing all of the projects for it, from the initial development through the various enhancements and on to the ultimate retirement?

There are benefits to this approach, and some significant drawbacks.

The logic for the approach
The argument for having the same project manager working on all projects related to a particular product comes down to understanding. There’s a benefit to having consistency between the PM who runs the initiative that first develops the product and the PM who manages the work that enhances, modernizes or otherwise evolves the product. The PM will have greater context for the work, a stronger understanding of the roadmap, and an appreciation for how the product integrates with other aspects of the organization. That integration aspect applies to external products as well as internal—things like professional services, …

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