What is product management?

Before we can delve into what it means to be a product leader, it’s useful to clarify what we mean by product management itself, as it is a constantly evolving role. As we’ve already mentioned, product leadership and product management are not the same thing, but they are inextricably linked. An understanding of what product management is and is not will help contextualize the product leadership conversation.

As Marty Cagan, Founding Partner of Silicon Valley Product Group and a 30-year veteran of product management, puts it, “The job of a product manager is to discover a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible.” Similarly, coauthor Martin Eriksson, in his oft-quoted definition of product management, calls it the intersection between business, user experience, and technology (see Figure 1-1; only a product manager would define themselves in a Venn diagram!). A good product manager must be experienced in at least one, passionate¹ about all three, and conversant with practitioners of all three.

Figure 1-1. Product management has been called the intersection between business, technology, and user experience (source: Martin Eriksson, 2011).

Business

Product management is above all else a business function, focused on maximizing business value from ...