The Cranky Product Manager knows an individual — let’s call him The Asshole Product Manager (APM for short) — who once committed that most grievous of product management sins: pissing off development.
We’re not talking about an ordinary “pissing off” here. This was big — well beyond the annoyance that developers typically feel when their PM asks for an idiotic new feature at the 11th hour of a release. No, that oh-so-typical tension pales in comparison to how Engineering felt about the APM. This was extraordinary; mammoth, even. A level of pissed-offishness that defied reason. Maybe you’d even call it hate.
How did the APM do it? How did he rise to such high levels of intense animosity? How did he sink to such low levels of respect?
Allow the Cranky PM to recount actual quotes from this ghastly creature’s mouth:
“I’m pleased to introduce the new features for MY product, the <generic product name here>.”
“This feature here is really cool. The idea for it came to me while I was vacationing in the Cote d’Azur.”
“I decided to have my team work on this great feature first. Next I’ll get them to work on Y.”
“<Insert Sales VP name>, the reason the release is late is because Development isn’t doing its job.”
Comments like these liberally peppered the APM’s presentations to higher-ups and customers. Each time she heard them, the Cranky PM nearly gagged from the pungent bullshit smell emitted by the APM. Who knew that the APM was the creative force behind these bold new products, that all the credit was due to him (unless the product sucked, of course)? Who knew the APM controlled such a large team of developers — that they reported to him?
Although the APM’s words were not outright lies, and even might be “technically” correct, they were definitely not true. He deliberately misled to make his own role seem that more important. Development knew about it and hated the APM for it.
And now for the Cranky Lesson of the Day:
The product belongs to the entire team, not the Product Manager. Because the Product Manager might be the most visible member of the team (getting quoted in the industry magazines and giving presentations to the Board, etc.), the Product Manager has a responsibility to promote the team as well as the product. She must highlight their herculean efforts and amazing results, give credit and praise early and often, deal with team conflicts and problems in a respectful, private manner, and not hang the team out to dry when bad news is coming down the pike.
It’s simple, common decency. Developers will despise any product manager who does not, at least, afford them that.
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Very fun stuff. I’m enjoying your writing, and just subscribed – looking forward to more. Thanks for adding us to your blogroll too!
I always liked Lincoln’s approach – share credit and take blame. I guess that would be an LPM. I’ve been lucky enough to not run into any true APMs. Clueless people occasionally, but not straight-up APMs.
There’s a saying in poker – if you don’t know who the fish is, you’re the fish. I hope that doesn’t apply to product management.
Anyway, good writing, keep it up!
Another great way to piss of your engineering team? — ask for “zero defect” software. After the shock of acknowledging that the code they write is full of bugs (most devs I’ve worked with seem to be able to code between 5-25 bugs per day), they’ll work hard to convince you that the deferrals, the “NIH” bugs, the “It’s micosoft’s fault”, and the other long list of “resolutions” acutally result in software with no shipping bugs.
It’s all in how you write the spec, see.
That is so true, I heard it earlier in my career, all of us got together after the meeting and bitched about the APM. “I” have avoided saying “I” period, try to make “I”, “WE” wherever possible. Its not yours to begin with, well, unless you own the company.
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