Defining the Software Product Manager's Role

To set the stage, let’s agree upon a common definition of a few terms. I’ll use Wikipedia as a reference.

Product Management - is an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle.

Product Marketing - deals with the first of the "4P"'s of marketing, which are Product, Pricing, Place, and Promotion. Product marketing, as opposed to product management, deals with more outbound marketing tasks. For example, product management deals with the nuts and bolts of product development within a firm, whereas product marketing deals with marketing the product to prospects, customers, and others. Product marketing, as a job function within a firm, also differs from other marketing jobs such as Marcom or marketing communications, online marketing, advertising, marketing strategy, etc. A Product Market is something that is referred to when pitching a new product to the general public.

Software Product Management - is the process of managing software that is built and implemented as a product, taking into account lifecycle considerations and generally with a wide audience. It is the discipline and business process which governs a product from its inception to the market or customer delivery and service in order to generate biggest possible value to the business [1]. This is in contrast to software that is delivered in an ad-hoc manner, typically to a limited clientele, e.g. service.

Role of the Software Product Manager in its traditional on-premise model is defined as:

The product manager leads and manages one or several products from the inception to the phase-out in order to maximize business value. He is working with marketing, sales, engineering, finance, quality, manufacturing and installation to make his products a business success. He has the business responsibility beyond the single project. He determines what to make and how to make it and is accountable for the business success within an entire portfolio. He approves roadmap and content and determines what and how to innovate. He is responsible for the entire value chain of a product following the life cycle and asks: What do we keep, what do we evolve, what do we stop?

Here is a short list of topics how software product managers can deliver better results[1]:

1. Behave like an “embedded CEO”
2. Drive your strategy and portfolio from market and customer value
3. Be enthusiastic on your own product
4. Have a profound understanding of your markets, customers and portfolio
5. Measure your contribution on sales (top-line) and profits (bottom-line)
6. Periodically check assumptions such as business cases
7. Take risks, and manage them
8. Foster teamwork based on lean processes
9. Insist on discipline and keeping commitments
10. Be professional in communication, appearance, behaviors …


This definition doesn’t talk about HOW a product manager achieves his or her objectives.

So, how will the role of the software product manager change with SaaS products?

More to come in the next posting. Stay tuned. This could get interesting.