The Best-in-Class Product Manager Part 4: The Technology 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 the last installment of this series, I reiterated four key pillars a best-in-class product manager drives:

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

The article focused on manual, technology-assisted, and technology-exclusive process components and the role the best-in-class product manager plays in ensuring all components are incorporated into the business system. Next up is the technology pillar.

Of the four pillars, the technology pillar is likely the most familiar to a product manager. A best-in-class product manager can understand the why as articulated by a business owner, translate it into a business system what, and ensure the technological how developed by engineers aligns to the what and satisfies the why.

It’s also important that a product manager has an eagle-eyed view of things that can adversely impact technology development and can proactively mitigate or quickly respond when bad things happen. Having that eagle-eyed view is key to being considered a best-in-class product manager.

To better support the eagle-eyed …

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