The product manager job description changes as companies grow
To some extent, the size of your company will affect the role of the product manager. When a company is small, the founders or senior management typically do all the product activities as the company has (and is) just one product.
As companies grow, senior management becomes busy running the business, hiring new people, and dealing with investors. They don’t have time for some of the more detailed, time-consuming product activities like writing requirements, so that’s usually when the need for the first product manager is identified. In our experience, this is usually someone within the business as they already understand the product, and their focus is on tactical things like fixing issues, supporting sales, and managing the requirements backlog.See our blog on being the first product manager.
Once a company has multiple products, then prioritizing becomes a more pressing issue. There is always a bottleneck that holds things back – whether that’s development resources, management time, or marketing spend. With a bigger, more complex company to run, senior management become even less close to the details of the products.
They need someone to manage the product day-to-day, help them prioritize, and think about future product plans. A little more process is required, and product managers start working on business cases, product reporting, and roadmaps.
As companies grow, they get more customers and start selling in multiple markets with multiple products and propositions. Senior management concerns themselves with the big picture and doesn’t have time to deal with the details of each product. This is where product managers need to take on a leadership role. They need to bring a balanced ‘product focus’ to senior management to help them understand the opportunities, issues, and options to drive the product forward in support of the company strategy.
As companies mature, they often create specialist functions in areas such as pricing, channel management, and proposition development. It makes sense to focus expertise and experience in one place. However, it means the product activities become more fragmented across different parts of the business. At this stage, Product Managers have a vital leadership and coordination role to keep a balanced product focus for the business.
