And so I have been busted.
Ilya Venger rightly recognised my post yesterday was a rant. One of those pounded out on the keyboard in frustration.
And I am frustrated. The reputation of product management is in the toilet, let’s just be honest about that.
Ilya sets out his hypotheses as to why this has happened. And I have no disagreements.
He mentions development velocity and that’s the one I want to pick up on.
It seems to have become all about speed of delivery. Which of course is an important component. But speedily delivering the wrong things helps nobody.
There seems to be a reluctance to allow product managers to practice their art. It is perceived as slowing delivery as it comes before building. And of course, the true practice of Product is premised around doing due diligence to ensure we will speedily deliver the right thing.
People feel better when they perceive 'something is happening' they can see and quantify. And coding, and building, and sprints, and so on, make everybody feel better. There is 'action' happening. They can see it and create shiny roadmaps, confluence documents, and Jira tickets, to prove it.
The true art of Product, is to ensure we're building the right thing, and that process is largely invisible to most, and hard to quantify. And takes time to do well. And so is simply thought of as a blocker to ‘real action’.
Well, I know what I’d rather. Allow the practice of Product to ensure we’re building the right thing, rather than spin our wheels rapidly and speedily building the wrong things.
Sometime you need to slow down, to speed up.
This has become another rant!
#productmanagement
