The Best-in-Class Product Manager Part 1: The Policy Pillar

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  

In my recent series, I outlined 42 questions a product manager should ensure are answered across the following software development life cycle phases:

• 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, processes, systems and policy designs required to deliver the required capabilities.
• Solution Development – The people, processes, systems, and policy capabilities developed and ready for testing, training, and deployment planning.
• Solution Readiness – All solution aspects are accepted and ready to be deployed.

The foundation of these 42 questions is based on a product manager functioning as something I call a business system steward, which at its core requires focus on four pillars:

1. Policy – The governing corporate and regulatory rules a business system must align and adhere to
2. People – The skills and knowledge humans need to enable a business system
3. Process – The human activities required both with and without technology to enable a business system
4. Technology – The automation required to enable a business system

In my …

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