Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Nathan Allsopp Credits to Freepik for the icons in use.

The role of a Product Manager can be very rewarding. Their efforts have direct impacts on a company’s product, customers, processes and staff. Many end up playing a key role as the compass that navigates the company’s ship (product).

However, like any role, actually being a Product Manager comes with its challenges. Playing such a key role within a company means being pulled at in many directions at the same time, having to juggle competing agendas and more. Many articles glorify the importance of a Product Manager, but often leave out the unspoken challenges that they face. Having worked previously at a Product Manager, I’ve heard many PMs mention certain activities they find difficult. Read on for more.

1 — Wielding little to no direct/actual power

The Product Management function within many businesses is independent to that of engineering or design. As a result, many Product Managers face the issue of being no direct reports or line of authority into the functions of the business building the strategy they are setting. When they have to push agendas, systems or processes internally that people don’t like, they cannot simply wield any business power over those involved.

You meet the new PM Janice? She’s telling me I have to come to a scrum every day. That sounds like a joke!

They have to communicate effectively, act as thought leaders, wield deep knowledge of the customer, know the market inside out, have a deep understanding of the numbers behind the product and more. A great challenge for many Product Managers is they have to build themselves up as a great source of knowledge and use their influence to get internal backing from those involved because they appreciate the importance of the task at hand.

2 — Shielding developers and designers from random crap

I’m sure many Product Managers reading this have seen this first-hand. A senior executive completely ignoring processes, running down straight to the developer and asking for help on some non-related task they could probably Google.

A friend’s company is using React & it sounds real cool. Can you swap everything over to that? Don’t tell Janice.

Product Managers need to act as task filters for those working on the product, deciphering whether these tasks really require more effort or can be fixed simply. The challenge here lies in the fact that the PM themselves then needs to complete such odd jobs when shielding them from others. Whether it is IT support for other staff, setting up equipment, tracking team expenses, managing subscriptions, on-boarding new staff or more, they often end up falling onto a PM.

3 — Facing some resistance to change with systems or processes

Whether your team uses JIRA, Trello, Asana, Basecamp, Spreadsheets or a pinboard in your office, a Product Manager’s job is to ensure systems are in place.

I’m too busy to track my work Janice. These systems slow me down, plus I’m a senior so I don’t have to. Can you do it for me?

A business needs to be able to understand at any given time what they are working towards, what they have done so far, what is in progress and what needs more time. However, the nature of this is often that some employees don’t want to follow these systems. They add more time, more effort and some prefer to get on with the work and not worry about such systems. A Product Manager needs to ensure staff understand the importance of these systems.

4 — Being the interface between technical and non-technical staff

Situations where executives dream up a new feature, get super excited and believe it to be an easy lift to build are all too common.

We’ve cracked the big idea, Janice! We need an AI module fully integrated this time next week for 100,000 users.

Product Managers play a key role in feasibility, estimation and managing expectations. It is difficult trying to explain to business executives with minimal technical expertise on why something takes three months instead of three weeks. You have to ensure that you give your engineering team enough time to define, research and execute the solution, but also give the company tangible features within a reasonable timeframe.

5 — Having to follow a plan that doesn’t always feel right

Many articles glorify Product Managers and promote that they are the CEO of their product. In reality, the CEO is the CEO of the product — they run the company, employ the staff, employ you, likely started the product in the first place, led the product for some time and so on.

Janice — thanks for the insight that 90% of users like A but my kid and his friends thought B, so we’re going to do B.

They choose the direction and call the shots — Product Managers then have to live within those boundaries. Sure a PM has input to the CEO and company on strategies, but the executives have the final say. Even if you don’t necessarily agree with it, you might just have to get used to certain things being outside your control.

6 — Not enough data, customer feedback or feature validation

This point can wildly differ between the type of company a PM works in, but many face the same issue to differing degrees. Many glorify their data-driven, customer feedback-driven approaches on delivering pinpoint products. However, not every company leads with this approach — even if they are pushing it through marketing materials. Decisions may be made by an executive’s gut feeling, some unrelated person’s input or so on.

Janice, this is customer-driven. Our biggest customer asked, even though it doesn’t make sense, but we’ll do it anyway.

It is up to a Product Manager to be the thought leader in terms of encouraging a company to invest in data and customer feedback programs that deliver real value. However, people, perspectives and arrogance can often get in the way — some companies or individuals feel they can make better decisions themselves.

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Nathan Allsopp is a Freelance Product/UI/UX Consultant based in Sydney, Australia.

This post originally appeared on my portfolio here.

The unspoken challenges of being a Product Manager was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The unspoken challenges of being a Product Manager

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