What is a Product Manager?

This question has been a hot topic at work of recent times as this role has evolved (and some may say distorted) since the implementation of Agile. One of my colleagues passed on this article which added more fuel to the debate.

It would seem there is a greater debate about what a product manager is in terms of role definition. If you’re a product manager I’d be interested in what you do compared to others, like myself in the same field. Here’s a bit of what I do during each stage of the development cycle.

• Daiy: Scrum master, incident manager, problem solver
• Sprint: Facilitor & manager , manage requirements (high level / detail)
• Release: Facilitor & manager, communicator
• Product: Innovator, manager requirements (high level)
• Portfolio: Roadmap and planning (product backlog / release plans)
• Strategy: Roadmap

Is working Agile a bit like ground hog day?

At our last retrospective meeting, one of my developers hinted he wasn’t liking the routine. He said he felt like Bill Murray’s character in Ground Hog Day, where every morning he woke up and it was the same thing over and over again.

While this seems like a bit of an extreme comparison, there was an element of truth in what he said. While the framework of Agile dictates a certain amount of repetition, it also gives those involved the flexibility to work on different things each day, and decide as a team what’s most important.

The rest of the team disagreed, expressing they liked having less surprises and more structure to the working day / week. In my experience, this is the general consensus, but I’d be interested if anyone out there thinks differently.

All in the planning, not in the plan

I first came across this quote when I was cramming from a job interview at The Guardian a few years ago while reading Mike Cohen’s book Agile Estimating and Planning.

Unfortunately I didn’t get the job that time. What I got was far more valuable as it opened my eyes to effective planning techniques. This lead to me getting a job with a large publishing company who were in the throws of implementing Agile, using Scrum.

So, why the blog? I thought it might be a good place to discuss what happens using this framework on a day to day basis and hopefully get some of your views and experience.