Since the beginning of my summer internship as a PM at Microsoft, I found so many people in the tech business wondering what PMs do, interestingly many PMs among them. Because this confusion is so common, there are discussions on the definition of a PM role across Microsoft. Having been a part of these discussions, I have gotten closer to an answer to this seemingly simple question: “What do Program Managers do?”
In my opinion, a PM does everything it takes to make the product great, which requires answering 4 questions.
1. “Why do we want to build this product?”
A product should always help customers achieve more with less. Any product proposal should be evaluated against this category, and the evaluation is up to the PMs. A PM is charged to find the pain points in her customers’ lives, and keep them in mind throughout the life of the product.
Finding the pain points can be hard: customers may not have the channel to voice them, may not want to do anything about them, or may simply not realize them. This is a very creative part of a PM’s job: not unlike a TV interviewer, a PM needs to study her customers as she interacts with them, in order to find the right questions to ask.
When a PM understands what her customers really want, she is ready to evaluate a product. If she did a good job finding pain points, this should flow automatically. She will be able to identify products valuable to customers, and modify the ones less so.
2. “What should the product do?”
This question is equivalent to “how to solve the pain points for customers?” because, once again, a product is centered around its customers.
When a product proposal is on the right track of solving pain points, a PM polishes it by matching its features to specific customer needs. She does so with the help from engineering, marketing, business and customers themselves, and this process helps her understand the product comprehensively.
A PM should therefore be the go-to expert on her product; there shouldn’t be a user FAQ she cannot answer. That’s why PMs also strive to tackle any unknown area in the universe of their products: designing, technical or business.
3. “How are we going to approach this?”
Now, the PMs need to get a little bit technical. I don’t mean “getting their hands dirty” and actually implement the features, but finding their ways around the team to push the product development (because, surprise surprise, PMs don’t actually write code!).
This is a fairly comprehensive job and could have potentially many aspects: a PM understands the product well to find the best teammate to talk to about technical details; she encourages team discussion and makes sure everyone can bounce idea off her; she provides the team with timely feedback to help the development flow smoothly; she helps building team culture to attract talents on-board…
Finding the best way to help team collaborate – that’s the problem PMs try to solve here.
4. “How to make this product sustainable?”
This question really consists of two parts: sustainability on the company’s side, and on the customers’ side.
To the company (shareholders), sustainability is simply a good business model. While understanding how the product helps customers, a PM also needs to be clear on how does it benefit the company: How is this project financed? Why? How does it generate revenue? From whom? What are factors that can break this business model? How to mitigate when/if they occur?… A PM job is really a business job when it comes to working with the company: it is key to know the business value of the product for a PM.
For the customers, sustainability means the product must stay attractive to them. A PM needs to stay tuned to her customers and know their struggles with the product. This way, she can work closely with the team to tailor the product to better fit customer needs. Short feedback cycle, better development iterations, well-prioritized feature and bug list, these are what the PMs aim for in order to keep the customers around.
Summary
In answering these questions above, a program manager shifts her focus from customer (why would this product help customers), to product (what is it), to her team (how do we build this), to business (what’s the business model) and back to customer (how to retain customers). This cycle keeps iterating to constantly improve the product.
In summary, a PM is a polymath, versatile and well-rounded, who needs to take care of many aspects to make the product great.