The Importance of Product Managers
July 31st, 2008BTW, product managers and PROJECT managers are the same thing to me.
Recently, I’ve started to really see the value of having strong (detail-oriented) product managers in a company. Until a year ago, “I” or my “second-hand woman” product managed everything. We were certainly bottle-necking our business.
Then, earlier this year, we launched our first product that I had personally had ZERO involvement in. The launch went through flawlessly and the product was far better than what I could have made it. It was then that I learned the importance for product managers.
Since then, we’ve slowly been growing and focusing in on product managers. Something happened though and as of the last month, product managers have engrossed my life! 
About 2 weeks ago, we were able to successfully hire a part-time contractor to now become a full-time, on-site product manager for one of the most important products we’ll launch this year (Q4).
Then, about 3 days ago, I get a series of e-mails from our lead technical outsourcing team that they TOO are implementing project managers. I was pretty excited to hear this because it was going to start making communication easier. Easier communication means faster work!
As if that was not enough, TODAY, we just brought on another amazing product manager to start managing a new product we’re launching soon that has tremendous un-charted territory value for our long-term business.
The more great product managers I bring on, the easier MY job (as a CEO) becomes and so do the jobs of everyone else in the company (since things get organized).
However, hiring the WRONG project manager can also be a nightmare leading to MASSIVE losses. I’ve hired a few of those too in my time
Here are some tips to hire top-notch project managers:
1. Make sure they are detail oriented.
2. You’re looking for OPERATIONAL people, not really strategic or marketing (although sometimes you get lucky and get both).
3. Have past experience (CRITICAL).
4. Versatile. The person must be at least somewhat familiar with many aspects of the project.
5. People Person. A product manager’s main job is to manage people and the delegated tasks. If they don’t get along with the team, that’s a miserable failure waiting to happen.
6. Firm & Authoritative Personality - This is critical because in many ways, they’ll be the “true boss” of the project. If team members can easily fool them or “push them around,” the project will never get done.
To know if they’re firm enough, ask yourself this question: “Would I promote this person to top management?” If your answer is no, I’d think twice about their ability to be a good product manager.
Moral of the story? If you run a company with many product offerings and you really want to see growth, get yourself and your business organized with product/project managers.
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Tags: product manager, project manager
