The Product Management Leader

Rich is the CEO of Mironov Consulting. He coaches product executives, product management teams and revenue-focused agile development organizations.

  Leadership   Stakeholder Management   Strategy   Talent Management   Teams   ProjectsAtWork  

Product management leaders must create an environment in which their teams can succeed. That includes attention to organizational design, behavior modification, and relentless focus on the most important projects. Here are seven ideas for creating conditions that can unleash outstanding product and technical work.

Individual product managers drive individual products or services. Product Management leaders establish the broader context for getting great products/services built and successful. They use a combination of processes, trust-building, hiring, mentoring and cross-functional leadership to help their individual product managers succeed. Since I spend most of my time wrangling product issues at the C-Level, here are some thoughts on creating conditions that can unleash great product/technical work.

For context, let’s imagine a newly arrived Vice President (or Director) of Products. She is taking over a five-member product management team, matched with a development organization of fifty people. Product roles are poorly defined, priorities are muddy, overall development productivity is uninspiring, and there’s lots of griping about how product management isn’t doing its job. What should our product management leader put on her three-month strategic to-do list?

1. Create and merchandise a minimalist current-quarter priority list. …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.