This is an updated version of the mind map of the scope of responsibilities for product mangers that I build for an earlier post. I had some feedback on the original version and the scope of the product management role has evolved in the last few years. Accordingly, I have made updates to this map to address:
- continuous review of the product business plan through roadmaps/release mapping and the adjustment of the business success criteria over a 3 year horizon. This approach complements the agile software development methodologies and their affect upon product evolution.
- the accelerated migration of product delivery using cloud services which requires addressing DevOps methodologies for production deployment, performance monitoring, and application usage logging. The deployment of products as SaaS requires the PM team to regularly review the costs to deploy and maintain the services/applications over the full deployment lifecycle.
- user experience requirements for mobile users, as well as the support for multiple languages. The rapid convergence of laptop/desktop/tablets/smartphones hardware and software frameworks puts a focus on well designed and adaptable UIs. In addition, the development tools for the above reduces the technical roadblocks of providing multiple language support for a larger customer base.
- social networking platforms. Platforms like Facebook and LinedIn offer bi-directional communications between many of the product stakeholders. I would recommend that the responsibility for the care and feeding of these communication channels lies with Product Marketing roles, who typically spend much time leveraging the potential for these platforms. However, Product Managers must pay close attention to the content generated there.
If you have suggestions for improvements, by all means drop me a note at (tom@stoneturnerllc.com) or comment. In the meantime, if you would like a pdf copy, you can download it from here.
