Many #startups that I speak with are confused about the role of a PM. Often this role is filled by #founders, or business analyst or by someone in BD or sales. There are also organizations where this role is not created and sort of everyone (or no one) is driving.
Is it simply lack of awareness? Or a legacy of IT Services culture?
PM plays a crucial role in the successful creation of a product and repeatable revenue business.
* A product manager is often a generalist role and wears many hats and does multiple things
* Most importantly this role synthesizes all the information from customers, market and competition, executives and sales and helps build a better product that meets or exceeds customer needs
* A PM also educates and enables development to actually build the product and continuously negotiates with all teams to help arrive at what is possible given the multiple constraints of resources, time, sales pressure
* The overarching objective is make customers happy and build a successful business
A product manger is not a-
1. Requirements gathering analyst
2. Marketer
3. Project Manager
4. Customer support manager
5. Technical Lead
– but they do some of that..