By Marty Cagan · svpg.com · LinkedIn
Marty Cagan argues that many product releases fail because the product manager role is poorly defined in companies, and that this is often the root cause of wasted release cycles. He defines the product manager as the single accountable owner of detailed product definition, and product marketing as responsible for telling the world about the product. He describes three common problem setups: marketing-driven products, a split role between two people, and one person doing both jobs. Each leads to products that are not useful or usable. He concludes that clearly separating these roles, while keeping strong product marketing, is essential, because great engineering cannot compensate for having nothing useful and usable to build.
01Key takeaways
- Every product needs a single accountable product manager who owns the detailed product definition.
- Product marketing is important but is a distinct job from defining what gets built.
- Splitting product ownership between marketing and a spec writer leaves no one truly responsible for the product.
- Asking one person to do both PM and product marketing rarely works well and does not scale.
- Validate product definitions with real customers and users before engineering builds them.
- Great engineering cannot make up for a poorly defined, unusable product.
02Key sections
- The core problem
- Cagan claims most releases are ill-conceived and traces this largely to how the product manager role is defined and staffed. He frames the article as getting to the heart of what the PM job should be.
- Defining the two roles
- The product manager owns the detailed product definition, while product marketing owns telling the world about it. He stresses these are very different jobs.
- Three problematic situations
- He describes marketing-driven products, a split between business owner and spec writer, and one person forced to cover both roles. Each pattern tends to produce weak products.
- Why the mixed models fail
- Combining the roles is rarely done well, and splitting ownership leaves no one truly accountable. Enterprise companies often slide into passing along customer requests without real product thinking.
- The path forward
- Companies should clearly define the distinct roles and have the PM validate the product with real customers, while product marketing manages the launch and sales tools. The two roles collaborate through defined inputs.
03From the post
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Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.