Fundamentals are always "in"
Somewhere along the way, last 10 years PMs started burrowing into the agile lifestyle - and when we did, we lost the lense of the business.
Not sure where the idea came from that PMs are little agile soldiers - diligently creating tickets and crafting delicious user stories - maybe FAANG? I think it was maybe even Google that “recreated” the idea of a PM since they needed bodies for this new endeavor they had, and the old-skool “consumer goods paradigm” didn’t really apply to them. I read somewhere that Marisa Mayer said she could train a PM in 1 month. I always thought that was bananas. But now I realized - they redefined the term to their own definition, and the rest of us just got swept up in the moment.
But nonetheless this has really bedded in - and its slowly killing the profession.
What ails PM these days is that many PMs don’t have a perspective on the $$$ - they have lost sight of one of the biggest parts of our job - maybe THE biggest: we are the keeper of the economic flame for our company.
PM is the only role in most software organizations that is paid to materialize success… over time… by virtue of consistent, continued investment in product attributes … that are valued by the market, and that the company can provide more uniquely and efficiently, that substitutes cannot.
That’s a mouthful for sure.
Certainly everyone at the company has this as PART of this as their brief - but they all have other more pressing problems - sales sells, dev develops, HR hires and fires, and finance tracks the money.
As a PM your PRIMARY brief is “the engine.” It’s the one goal that if YOU do not own, is likely to go unaddressed. The engine will get out of tune. No one will own it. As a PM, you need to own it.
It’s why people say PMs are the CEO of their Product. PMs laugh usually at this. Devs roll their eyes. The intent is not “you get to boss people around” - because anyone who believes that CEOs mostly boss people around probably has no idea what CEOs do. It’s more - you must take ownership for the business, at large. The larger your product line is, the more of a “general management” outlook you need to have.
It’s what makes the job hard and it’s also why people who consider it their calling, consider it their calling.
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