Thought some people would find this stream of tweets from Charlie Kindel [0] http://ceklog.kindel.com/2015/06/18/what-it-means-to-be-great-product-manager/ interesting. I'd also recommend perusing his other posts about leadership & engineering culture. Here's my take on a few snippets, curious to hear your thoughts as well:
*"the only work that truly matters is that of the engineers"*
While engineers might be responsible for "actually building things," Charlie himself admits that the quality (and relevance) of our work is highly dependent on multiple factors leading up to the first engineer's keystroke.
*"left to their own devices, engineers will do two things: 1) the most complicated thing, 2) the thing they think is fun"*
Guilty as charged, but I think engineers who are "sold" on the teams' mission are capable of making good decisions about what to work on. Our current situation in the Readership vertical is a live experiment on this subject.
Finally, I wholeheartedly agree that I do my best work when it's crystal clear *"who the customer is, where the customer is, why the customer cares, why it’s important for the business, and when it’s relevant."*
Happy reading!
Brian
0: http://ceklog.kindel.com/2015/06/18/what-it-means-to-be-great-product-manage...