Some years ago I worked at a product company where the VP of Product had an epiphany late one night and added the role of project manager to his product managers long list of duties.
As you might guess, this approach didn’t turn out well.
The product managers were new to their product role and struggling to master it so how could they possibly learn the project manager role with no training or prior skills in project management.
In addition, the teams were using Scrum, a framework with only three roles and where project management is split among the three roles. Note: there’s research that shows the fewer roles in a company the more profitable the company so please refrain from adding more roles.
By adding the project manager role, the VP created chaos. Work was late even though the team was working longer hours and several of the developers left the company.
Fact is, it’s more about designing an environment for success.
Rich Mironov writes a post that shows how product managers can make design decisions that boosts the team’s ability to deliver.
Here’s three of his tips:
- Forcing slack into the plan so the team has room to adjust to changes.
- Manage interrupts. Most interrupts can wait until the next sprint planning session.
- Don’t prioritize the entire backlog. Leave room for emergent learning.