2learn

Product Management

What it is

Product management is deciding what to build, why, and in what order, against a business goal. It is a decision role rather than an authorship role: the artefacts are an ordered backlog, a roadmap and the reasoning that connects them to an outcome the business cares about.

Why it matters

Every product builds something; the question is whether anyone is accountable for whether it was worth building. Without that accountability the backlog fills with the loudest requests, engineering optimises a metric nobody chose, and the team ships steadily in a direction no one decided. Product management puts one person, or one small group, on the hook for that direction and gives them the authority to refuse work. The failure mode is equally worth naming: a product manager who becomes a ticket router, passing requests between teams without ordering them, is not making the decisions the role exists to make.

In this track

  1. The decision role (04-product-process/03-product-management/01-the-decision-role) — what is decided, by whom, and against which business goal.
  2. Working with engineering and design (04-product-process/03-product-management/02-working-with-engineering-and-design) — dividing the problem so each discipline contributes its judgement.
  3. The evidence behind a decision (04-product-process/03-product-management/03-the-evidence-behind-a-decision) — what counts as a reason to build something, and what merely sounds like one.
  4. Saying no (04-product-process/03-product-management/04-saying-no) — refusing work in a way that keeps the relationship and the record.

Prerequisites

None.

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