Special greeting to the author “Jeff Lash”. It is really a courteous job. I must appreciate that you are spreading knowledge, but it is not complete. Following points may give fruitful thought for every reader,

Most of the strategical opinions comes out from tactical stuff.
I dont mean that you dont have to delegate but review is important.
All the knowledge which is going to others ( Marketing Deptt, R&D Deptt, Customers, Vendors) definitly going through you.
Product management also covers the area of product development. Development comes from the “most hectic knowledge” gain from bad or not satisfactory (Not going according to the expectation) product.
Write ups gave you another feel about the product, so you can contribute in overall business with different perspective.
Last but not least as a PM mostly we are only obeying the company policies and marketing Deptt requirements. Actual problem starts when you come up with a diverse solution in quite diversified market.

A product manager doesn’t have the time to do everything a product manager must do. Their contact with any particular employee will be very slight.

A product manager can’t arbitrate the war between sales and marketing, or marketing and R&D. A product manager can’t be permissive towards one department, and lax towards another. As a product manager, you don’t have time for the numerous wars that errupt within the business.

Having been involved in a massive product turnaround, I can attest to the fact that you will find ample opportunity to get sucked into fires (reference to “The Goal”)- not just high visibility issues, but also cases involving process variance/ risk factors where you have contingency plans in place.

The other end of the product management spectrum is that you get complacent thinking you have the right “chess pieces” with the right processes in place, despite the business’s environment being more dynamic.

A product manager is likely to find himself working toward building levers and and an ecosystem that improve outcomes.

This is essentially change management. Similar to the decisionmaking of a good general manager who realizes the limitations of the environment he operates in, a good product manager will wisely execrcise judgement in taking up tasks (even choosing tactical tasks) toward change.

When you use an integrated product management approach, you look at where people fit in the process, and their responsibilities. I think it’s good to have an idea of where you want others to fit in during the process.

I don’t remember our product manager getting into the job of the tech lead.

I do remember a product manager that didn’t spec in detail. He was usually upset that he didn’t get what he wanted.

Very helpful & intresting article for Product Manager’s.

Recently I switched my stream from marketing to Product Develoment and was Googling for some good articles and resources to go thru, to understand the role, work flow, how to deal with other departments in order to help me serve better.

Your article has really made me come up with some good working ethics at the starting phase my new job profile, which will surely help me to justify and perform well with my job.

Thanks for your efforts.

There was one point missed in the delegation checklist- does doing a particular task get me closer to the customer?

You could roll it up under “is it a valuable use of time?”, but this deserves seperate mention.

I have rolled up my sleeves and dug into tactical stuff at times simply because it was a great way to connnect with the customer- little brownie points I could leverage to gaining better insights into “The World As The Customer Sees It”.

Let’s find interesting articles about new products and services in the world at http://cheerproducts.blogspot.com/

Thanks for great article.