Product Manager Accountabilities (Part I): Product Strategy

Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.

  Product Management   Strategy   Talent Management   Teams  

Recently, I introduced the concept of product managers needing to focus on people, process, technology and policy pillars when driving systems solutions. Product managers have accountability as an extension of the project sponsor to ensure each of the four pillars work together in concert as a holistic business system.

While the concept may hold water, the next logical step to underscore what this looks like is more detail that can be better applied in a product manager’s day-to-day life. To that end, I will examine each of the following typical SDLC phases and outline 42 questions that a product manager should ensure are answered. The phases covered are:

• Product Strategy – The reason a product exists, and its intended goals.
• Product Roadmapping – The broad timeline in which future product capabilities are slated for release.
• Initiative Planning – The definition of a project to deliver capabilities within a budget and schedule timeline.
• Solution Design – The people, process, systems and policy designs required to deliver the required capabilities.
• Solution Development – The people, process, systems, and policy capabilities have been developed and are ready for testing, training, and deployment planning.
• Solution Readiness – All solution aspects are accepted and ready to be deployed.

Before going deeper, let&rsquo…

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