It seems as though in every discussion about product people I‘m involved with, the discussion inevitably turns to the topic of roles and responsibilities.
People get hung up on what role does X and why role Y does not appear on the org chart.
Organizations have a tendency to define specific roles differently, sometimes following industry norms closely, other times varying wildly.
What does seem to be consistent are the things product people are asked to do, regardless of what role they happen to fill.
Here are some different views on the subject of roles and responsibilities, specifically some thoughts on how to identify the roles and responsibilities relevant to your situation.
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Resources
We Need Fewer Product Managers
John Cutler suggested that the product manager role has become a catch all for several activities that may be better performed by others in the organization.
He’s not suggesting get rid of the product managers you have.
Rather, “We need MORE internal startup co-founders, UX, customer advocates, domain experts, service designers, complexity untanglers, researchers, and reliable ways to interact directly with users/customers. We need more product thinking, and less product managing.”
The 5 Roles of Product Development
Matt Moore suggests that while the titles that people have is not important, you want to make sure that you can point to someone on your team (he refers to them as the Directly Responsible Individual) who owns strategy, engineering, marketing, analytics, and operations.
One person does not have to own all those roles, but each role needs to be owned by someone.
Titles, Roles, and Responsibilities
A while ago, Marty Cagan made an attempt to identify the key responsibilities of product managers in the hopes of clarifying the confusion he say in the industry around the role in 2005. His resulting list of key responsibilities is still quite helpful to understand what product managers do and don’t do.
Roles Product People Play
Here is an exploration of product people, those folks involved with product development and IT work that concentrate on determining the right things to deliver. The four roles in particular I include in the category of product people are product manager, business analyst, user experience designer, and product owner.
Exercise to Define Roles and Responsibilities
If you’d like a collaborative way to define roles and responsibilities for your team and clarify your interactions, you may find this exercise from Atlassian helpful.