PM is the choose-your-own-adventure role

A year and a half ago, I left academia and started as a program manager at Microsoft.

But before that, I had no idea what a PM was or what they did. I had virtually no exposure to the role. I had never worked with one, never learned about them in my college classes, and didn't know how they interacted with other roles. I really knew nothing about being a PM!

I only had experience as a software developer and as a researcher. In my mind, those roles have well-defined definitions with tangible deliverables. Software developers take requirements and produce software. Researchers take an unknown and produce knowledge.

What does a PM do?

During my interviews, I asked several PMs how they defined it. Some of the responses I got were:

• The customer's advocate
• The facilitator between engineers, business, and customers
• The producer of clarity amidst ambiguity
• The creator of the product's vision
• The product's gatekeeper

Now that I have been in this role for over a year, I've seen that there is no single role that is PM. It is different for each product, team, and individual.

I've seen PMs execute in a number of ways:

• Write feature specifications
• Establish the product roadmap
• Rapidly build prototypes
• Design the user experience
• Conduct user research
• Analyze telemetry and feedback
• Define goals and metrics (OKRs and KPIs)
• Understand the competition
• Track and prioritize tasks
• Present updates to leadership
• Evangelize to customers
• Maintain communication with partner teams

People get frustrated that the role is so broad and doesn't always have tangible deliverables (e.g., lines of code), but I'm learning that is actually the power of a PM. They get to adapt to the situation to move the product forward. Each week can be wildly different.

It really is a choose-your-own-adventure role.

A few books I'd recommend for anyone interested in product management:

• The Design of Everyday Things (Amazon)
• The Lean Startup (Amazon)
• The Customer-Driven Playbook (Amazon)
• The Tyranny of Metrics (Amazon)