Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Product Management: If you see something wrong, don't let it go

Earlier I talked about how Product Manager should be the owner of the product.  One of the ways to become the owner is not letting things that you know about slip by.

When you own a product, it means that the product has your name on it.  You professionally and personally stand by the product and do whatever it takes to make it successful.  When the product succeed, you succeed.  When the product fails, you fail.

If you become a true owner, you don't let things slip by.  When things are not working and does not feel right, you call it out and fix it.  You never lie to yourself or settle with yourself and rationalize it by coming up with whatever excuse you can think of.

It's really simple in concept.  When you see something wrong, go back and fix it.  But in practice it gets hard because of competing priorities and dozen plus tasks that you work on any given day.  It is also hard because of no clear guideline to tell you what you should fret over and what should not really bother you.  As a product manager you have to calibrate yourself to draw that line somewhere.  All I can say is that it comes from experience and as you do more it gets easier to see that line.

Remember that all product managers are fighting the same battle as you do.  Limited number of hours in a day and they drew their line somewhere and trying to nail down everything that falls below the line.  The difference is that some do it better, and some don't.  That is why time management is an important skill that PM needs to master.

At the end of the day, you are judged by how well your product does.  Don't let the stuffs that you saw run over you.  You already have high enough risk of getting run over by something that you haven't seen.

There are enough risks in what you are not seeing.
Don't let stuff that you know of ruin your chance of success.
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