Comments on: Why it doesn’t matter where Product Management lives in the organization

By: Gad Barchana Lorand

Gad Barchana Lorand — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 04:28:00 +0000

RT @crankypm: Why it doesn't matter where Product Management lives in the organization ##prodmgmt http://t.co/kpQbd5O6

By: Product Management Reading | One More Thing

Product Management Reading | One More Thing — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:51:31 +0000

[...] Why it doesn’t matter where Product Management lives in the Organization (The Cranky Product Manager) – I firmly agree with Cranky’s thesis on this. I’ve worked for three separate product organizations. The first two reported up through marketing and the current one reports up through engineering. When product management is done correctly, it straddles both the business and technical teams so which ever one it formally reports to doesn’t matter. “The assumption is that if we sit in Engineering we’ll be too spineless and too tunnel-visioned to focus on the customer, market problems, issues for the field, the competition, or market positioning. But if we sit in Marketing that we’ll be so focused on empty soundbites and website color schemes that we won’t be able to give Development detailed enough requirements, that we’ll conjure up product features that can’t possibly be built (a la Warp Drive), and that we’ll stare vacantly into space instead of considering technical extension points (i.e. APIs) for our products.” [...]

By: Seilevel

Seilevel — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 05:00:11 +0000

Why it doesn’t matter where Product Management lives in the organization
http://bit.ly/4RxNX

By: Ned Hayes

Ned Hayes — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:29:15 +0000

interesting post about how it DOESN’T MATTER where Product Management lives in an org…. http://bit.ly/4RxNX

By: Paul Velonis

Paul Velonis — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:08:35 +0000

Where should product managers live http://bit.ly/hyr4D

By: ssheppard

ssheppard — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:59:35 +0000

I’m smiling at this :-) http://tinyurl.com/5mtae7 I

By: Saeed vs. Cranky PM: Fight! « On Product Management

Saeed vs. Cranky PM: Fight! « On Product Management — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:03:01 +0000

[...] must have made some really relevant points in some comments (1,2) on the Cranky PM’s site, because she decided to honour me with a post entirely dedicated [...]

By: On Engineering Meetings (redux) | The Cranky Product Manager

On Engineering Meetings (redux) | The Cranky Product Manager — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:40:27 +0000

[...] comments on her older blog posts. In particular, those from a certain reader who keeps inflicting violent disagreement on [...]

By: Worth the Read « i need a reality check

Worth the Read « i need a reality check — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 15:26:38 +0000

[...] Cranky Product Manager – “Why it doesn’t matter where Product Management lives in the [...]

By: Igor

Igor — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:59:39 +0000

Nice post. Speaking from experience, having the PM team report to the VP R&D is a very bad idea. Bad as in ineffective process, unhappy PMs and terrible products. The key problem is the lack of leverage when working with developers, as they quickly learn they can escalate any disagreement to the big boss who will invariably side with their seemingly more-techie-less-risky point of view. This may deteriorate to a state where R&D calls the shots on everything regardless of any spec or request. The VP R&D will never realize he/she are single-handedly demolishing the product and the product team. Actually they’d rather enjoy the ego boost that comes from having full control over everything to do with the product. On the other hand they’ll never allow any or this to filter outside his/her organization, so to the rest of the company, including the CEO, will not be aware that you are powerless as a PM and will rather assume you’re just inapt at your job. I’m pretty sure multiple potentially good companies had shut down because of this phenomenon.