Demystifying the Roles and Responsibilities of Product Professionals

Welcome & Webinar Overview

Roger Snyder | 00:00:00–00:04:30
hello everyone welcome and good morning my name is roger snyder and i’m the vp of marketing at Productside thank you so much for joining us this morning today we’re going to be discussing one of the foundational elements of what makes a product management team successful does everyone understand what the pm team does and how product decisions get made i’m excited that kenny kranseler has joined us this morning to talk about this important topic he is a principal consultant at Productside and a part-time instructor for the product management certificate program at the university of washington he has extensive experience in building developing and leading product management teams at innovative enterprises like amazon and microsoft and unicorn-ready startups across the pacific northwest he also spent time in a completely different kind of business working at kentucky fried chicken or these days known as kfc thank you for being with us today kenny

Kenny Kranseler | 00:00:00–00:04:30
thank you roger i’m i’m looking forward to it should be a fun discussion

Roger Snyder | 00:00:00–00:04:30
absolutely now you are up in seattle today right

Kenny Kranseler | 00:00:00–00:04:30
i am i am and it’s actually sunny out so what they say about it raining every day doesn’t quite hold true up here

Roger Snyder | 00:00:00–00:04:30
so our roles are reversed because it’s raining here i’m in scotts valley california and we’re getting some much needed rain quite frankly it’s been raining the last few days it’s wonderful we need that for sure

all right let’s do a couple of housekeeping things before we get started

first off we love to have you engaged in our product management community join our linkedin group on product management leadership the link should be pasted into the chat box for your easy access so join our community where you can share with your peers the latest thinking you’ll see updates from Productside but also just a lot of good sharing of ideas and concepts from the entire community

and at Productside we love interacting with you not just in the forum but here as well so during this webinar we encourage you to ask questions or give feedback if i remember i will try to invite you to add questions several times throughout and you can use the questions box on the right of your screen to type in questions or comments at any time we’ll leave time at the end for us to get through as many questions as we possibly can

now the most popular question is i want to answer it right now can i watch this webinar later and the answer is yes all attendees will receive a link to view the webinar in a follow-up email after this recording has ended another question typically is can i get a copy of the slides and the answer to that one is no because there are some copyrighted materials that we share and we’re not at liberty to distribute them but you will be able to get the link to the webinar and that should help you be able to review your favorite aspects of what we talk about today

let me tell you just a little bit about Productside we are passionate about product professionals and our mission is to empower product professionals with the knowledge and tools to build products that matter products that matter to your customers most of all products that matter to your company as well and products that matter to you as a product manager we do this by helping both individuals and teams get better at product management through the fullest set of services available and like i said we are helping both individuals who want to improve their skills and teams who want to transform and up the overall efficiency of the product management team to learn more go to Productside.com

we are continuing our product management leadership series and today’s installment is about how to transform your team we are talking about how you’re able to help as a leader or as an individual we have a lot of individual product managers attending today we’ll talk about that in a second but how to build up your team and transform it to be ever more efficient in conducting product management and building those products that matter

we looked at the results of folks who had registered as of last night and nearly half of the group today is product managers and product marketers but we have a great almost 25 percent representation of directors of product management or product marketing or vps of product management or marketing and we still have a smattering of other folks product owners who are curious about some of these things as well and other folks that are probably curious about the product management discipline in general so a good mix today

Why Role Clarity Matters for Product Teams

Roger Snyder | 00:04:30–00:09:00
so whether you’re participating as an individual contributor or leading a team of product managers i think you’ll find some value from understanding what your role is and how that fits with others in the organization

all right so let’s get into the meat of the presentation i’ll stop talking and let kenny take it from here

Kenny Kranseler | 00:04:30–00:09:00
thank you so much roger so what we’ll do in this session really is talk about the role of the product manager and how we can get agreement on what a product manager does and doesn’t do and how that aligns with some of the related roles that they have within the organization as well as thinking more broadly about how we can get the entire organization focused on taking active responsibility and decision-making especially with regard to products and product decisions

let’s start with a poll for those of you who are product managers or related to product management so what i’d like to do is get an understanding of how clear your role is

Roger Snyder | 00:04:30–00:09:00
so we’ve launched a poll that says i believe my role as a product manager is… well understood by me and the organization clear to me but not to others there’s overlap with others and sometimes conflict on who owns what or it changes depending on the day and i often feel like a janitor cleaning up everybody’s messes as a product manager

we talk about this “product janitor” feeling quite a bit in our courses that’s for sure and on the overlap one there’s always going to be overlap it’s the conflict part we’re really getting at in that third answer like overlapping in an unhealthy way versus overlapping in a healthy way

we’re almost up to about 75 percent participation which is awesome thanks everyone for voting

all right let me close out the poll now and share the results

we have the distribution that i would expect seven percent say well understood by me and the organization so unfortunately that’s why you’re here today

twenty-two percent say it’s clear what i need to do but not to others in the organization the biggest response was this overlap and conflict forty-six percent of our audience said overlap with others and conflict on who owns what and a full twenty-five percent said changes depending on the day i often feel like a janitor so there’s definitely that issue going on

Kenny Kranseler | 00:04:30–00:09:00
yeah so you’ve got a quarter of the folks thinking they’re janitors out there cleaning up everybody’s messes as a product manager that doesn’t sound like fun so hopefully we can help you all with that and our goal is that by the end of this discussion you at least have a path to see where that overlap is and how to manage it and work through it and ultimately get to the point where we have clarity on who’s responsible for what activity and who is responsible for what in the decision-making process

What Product Managers Really Do

Kenny Kranseler | 00:09:00–00:15:00
so let’s jump in when you’re developing great businesses or a great product proposition it really comes down to about three things that come together

first you need to understand the market that the business or the product plays in and what the dynamics are in that market in particular who is the customer and user and what needs they have that you’re trying to solve with your products

second you need to translate that understanding of those needs into the products that you develop to ensure there’s a fit between what’s needed and what you actually build essentially you’re creating products that fit the needs of the market

and third you need to make sure that you convince customers to purchase or for digital products subscribe to what you just created you need to create a business proposition and a marketing strategy that drives value for the business and for the customers

all three are essential and so within the enterprise we tend to have specific roles that support these three activities for defining the customer and user and their needs we often have a user experience or research team for actually building the products we have an engineering or development team or technology team that actually builds those products for us and when we think about the business around the product we tend to have a sales and marketing team that’s focused on building that proposition and driving growth

however most businesses need to have a group that shepherds all these requirements and keeps them coherent that is largely the role of the product management team

product managers ensure that we’re creating products that meet the needs of the markets and our customers and that we have a business proposition that ensures the product is effectively sold and sustains a healthy business

sounds simple but i think you can see from this picture there’s inevitable conflict and overlap that arises when we start defining these roles and who’s responsible for what

ideally a product manager is someone who understands both the corporation’s business strategy and the structure of the markets that the product competes in and uses that understanding to conceive innovative business concepts that drive value for both customers and the enterprise

the product manager doesn’t necessarily own the implementation of that product proposition into software or hardware but they do have a clear understanding of what the product requirements are to fulfill customer needs and they use that knowledge to drive appropriate trade-offs so the teams are being smart in developing a roadmap that ensures we are delivering the highest value in the most judicious and expedited manner possible

Roger Snyder | 00:09:00–00:15:00
and when i present this slide in class the one that trips people up is that idea that the product manager presents needs instead of presenting the implementation or the solution

Kenny Kranseler | 00:09:00–00:15:00
yeah the pm clearly needs to understand the needs and what the enterprise’s capabilities are in meeting those needs and maybe where we need third parties because it’s not necessarily us providing it but what’s the value chain and the delivery chain that gets it out there

Product Management vs. Product Marketing

Kenny Kranseler | 00:15:00–00:21:00
things can get tricky because sometimes product managers are pulled in different directions on the one hand they’re expected to be the market expert and accomplish all the tasks that sit on the left side of the classic diagram market research segmentation business cases and on the other hand they’re counted on to be the subject matter expert for their product and help the development team deliver working features all the tasks on the right

what happens inevitably is that the product manager tends to get pulled toward that right side these are the tasks that are usually pretty urgent they need to be handled now to get something done quickly the tasks on the left are less urgent but they’re critically important they ensure that you’re not only getting things done on the right quickly but you’re doing the right things and costing them correctly

the more time you spend on the left the more effective you’re going to be on the right ultimately if you want to be an effective product manager you’re balancing both halves of this chart making sure that you’re accomplishing the urgent tasks on the right but doing so in a way that’s properly informed by the important understanding of the marketplace the voice of the customer and the company’s business strategy on the left

Roger Snyder | 00:15:00–00:21:00
that’s when it feels good right when it all comes together

Kenny Kranseler | 00:15:00–00:21:00
yeah it does feel good when it all comes together but what i tend to find is most product managers i talk to spend about seventy percent of their time on the right here and about thirty percent on the left what i’d really like is for most product managers especially leading product managers to flip that ratio so they’re spending seventy percent of their time on the left and thirty on the right

let’s talk about some of the overlapping conflict that inevitably happens one big area is between the product manager and the product marketer or marketing team in general

one way to think about it is to consider the overall lifecycle of a product in Productside terms we think of this as the optimal product process you move from conceiving a concept to fit a business opportunity to starting to plan that initiative then to developing it testing it launching it and eventually retiring it

as you go through the process you’re really starting to move your thinking from “how do i get the right product onto the shelves” to “how do i move that product off the shelves and into customers’ hands”

the product manager and the product marketing manager should both be involved throughout this process as the two roles tend to be like hand and glove both participate throughout but it’s really a matter of who takes the lead at different stages

the product manager is probably taking the lead early in the process during the conceive and some of the early planning stages of course with input and assistance from the product marketer and then it’s the product marketer who’s probably taking over as we move toward launch and sustainment of the product driving adoption with the sales team of course with input and assistance from the product manager

Roger Snyder | 00:15:00–00:21:00
i love this analogy that we use of “the product manager’s center of focus is to get the right product onto the shelf and the product marketing center of gravity is getting the product off the shelf”

there’s this old shorthand that product management is completely inbound and product marketing is simply outbound and there’s some truth to that but i actually prefer this analogy more to describe the difference between these two

Kenny Kranseler | 00:15:00–00:21:00
and i like the triangles here everybody’s involved throughout the process it’s just a matter of how much of that triangle you’re taking up how big your piece is at that stage in the process

Product Manager vs. Product Owner (Agile)

Kenny Kranseler | 00:21:00–00:30:00
another conflict that inevitably happens is with agile development methodologies as agile has taken the product and technology world by storm most teams are doing some form of agile and the scrum framework that comes out of agile includes this role called product owner

it has naturally spawned a great deal of product owner versus product manager confusion and debate one of the first things to note is that both of these are actually roles not titles you may have the title of product manager and also be acting in the role of product owner

broadly speaking it’s the job of the product owner to maximize the value of the product and the work being done by the development team while the product manager is responsible for driving the strategy and the overall success of the product

as you start to break out the responsibilities you can think of the product manager role as being more strategically centered and more externally or market-facing while the product owner role is more tactical and more internal-facing and team-facing

so some of the key responsibilities of the product manager include clearly understanding the market including segmentation and competitive analysis as well as business analysis like forecasting and defining the business case and ultimately driving realization of that business case

the product owner’s responsibilities include defining the specific user stories and developing those into a backlog that’s accepted by the development team as they work through agile sprints and go from release to release

in the overlap between the two we have shared responsibilities like planning releases—when are the results of a set of sprints ready to go to customers—defining personas and positioning and being the advocate or representative of the customer for the development team

in many organizations that overlap needs to be negotiated between the individuals or the team as to who owns which tasks and even within the same organization you may define it differently depending on the personalities and capabilities of the specific product manager and product owner

Roger Snyder | 00:21:00–00:30:00
a couple of things here it’s not just about responsibility it’s also about alignment the closer that the product owner and product manager share the vision and deeply understand the personas the more effective both can be

one example i like to use is when i was working with remote resources in india having the product owner be a part of the team locally in india meant that i had a weekly meeting between myself as product manager and that product owner to make sure we were really aligned on business priorities the vision of the product and the personas we were serving

when i was asleep that product owner was properly driving the team towards creating the right business value and they knew the long-term vision they knew which way to head so when questions came up about whether to do a or b they knew the vision and the roadmap and were able to help guide the team in the right direction

Kenny Kranseler | 00:21:00–00:30:00
yeah no matter how you divide up these tasks between product manager and product owner they do need to stay synchronized on the vision and priorities and on release planning because ultimately the results of those shared responsibilities come down on the product and on the product owner’s work with the team

sometimes organizations assign both the product manager and product owner roles to one person and that can work in some situations for example if you’ve got a product that serves as a component of a larger product or an internal product used only by employees or a supporting product that serves external customers under the covers in those instances it might be more appropriate to fill both roles as one person because there are fewer market issues competitive issues and pricing questions to consider

in those cases fewer of the classic “product manager” responsibilities exist and it’s easier for one person to scale up and take control of both roles but there are tradeoffs in workload and time horizon and you have to be very conscious of that

Overlap with Other Roles

Kenny Kranseler | 00:30:00–00:34:00
there’s likely confusion and overlap between the product manager role and other roles in the organization as well including project managers program managers user interface and user experience designers and even business analysts

we’re not going to go deep on every one of those today because we want to focus on tools you can use to clarify ownership but it’s important to acknowledge that the product manager sits in the middle of a dense web of roles and handoffs

instead of writing giant job descriptions for every role we’d rather give you a way to make the boundaries explicit and agreed upon that’s where racy and daci come in

Introducing RACI: Clarifying Responsibilities

Kenny Kranseler | 00:34:00–00:43:00
the first tool is racy it’s an acronym that stands for responsible accountable consulted and informed a racy chart is really a responsibility matrix of all the activities or authorities in an organization set against the people and roles that participate

at the intersection of activity and role you assign one of those letters to indicate how that role participates in that activity

when you hear comments in your organization like “my boss always overrules my decisions whenever she wants” or “the approval process for even the simplest items takes so long” or “it seems everyone’s putting together a spreadsheet on the same data” or “things are always slipping through the cracks” or “i have the responsibility without the authority to get this job done” those are all strong signals that you could benefit from doing a racy analysis

so what do these racy categories mean responsible is the person who performs the activity or does the actual work accountable is the person who’s ultimately accountable and has the yes-no authority for that activity consulted is someone who needs to give feedback and contribute to the activity and informed is the person who needs to know the results of the activity

when you’re doing a racy matrix there’s sometimes confusion between the responsible person and the accountable person the way i like to think about the differentiation is the person who gets the r is the one who makes sure the work gets done they ask questions like “when will i have time to do this work what resources will it take when is it due” if you have too many rs you start to feel overwhelmed

there can be multiple responsible individuals for an activity you can share the r between multiple roles that’s okay

the accountable role holds the real authority in the system they approve the outcome or determine if the activity has been done well they ask “did the job get done and did it get done well” they exercise judgment and make decisions the risk for the accountable role is that sometimes the wrong call is made the buck stops there

because of that there should be one and only one accountable person for any activity there is never more than one a for a given row in your racy matrix

RACI in Practice: Examples & Pitfalls

Kenny Kranseler | 00:43:00–00:50:00
here’s a simple way to summarize the roles across racy r is the doer a is the authority c needs to be kept in the loop and provide input during the activity and i only needs to be informed after a decision or action has taken place

to illustrate racy i like to use a non-business example it takes out some of our biases and lets us focus more on the roles and responsibilities so i’m going to use an example from one of my favorite movies lord of the rings

if you remember in lord of the rings the team must ultimately create a fellowship to bring the ring that frodo has discovered to its appropriate resting place atop mount doom that’s the activity the initiative they’re moving forward

in that example gandalf the wizard is the authority figure in the team and he’s accountable for many of the activities in taking care of the ring but he’s relying on frodo and elrond to be responsible for specific activities related to creating the fellowship and administering the ring

sam and aragorn are consulted on some of those activities and they’re also responsible for doing some of the difficult work distracting and defeating enemies they’re in the block-and-tackle roles that support the mission

even for a simple process like getting a ring to the top of a mountain you can start to define roles and assign r a c and i to help clarify who does what

here’s what a more realistic racy chart might look like in your organization the major activities are the rows the key roles or departments are the columns and then you fill in r a c i in the cells

a couple of things to note you don’t need every role in every activity you may leave some intersections blank and there can be multiple rs for an activity what you don’t want is multiple as and you also don’t want a matrix where every cell is filled with c or i because that means you’ve invited everyone into everything and you’ve created a bottleneck

when you’re doing racy analysis you can look at it in two ways the first is horizontal you take one row across and ask do we have no rs that means the job may not get done or do we have everyone as an r that’s where you wind up in the “product janitor” scenario where everyone thinks it’s their job do we have no a that means no one has real ownership or do we have two as on a row don’t do that pick one

the other way is vertical take one column and look at it top to bottom if one person has rs everywhere they’re going to get overwhelmed if one role has no rs and no as you may not actually need that role for this process or you might need to rethink how they’re engaged and if executives have all the as you’re creating a big bottleneck where nothing moves without going through them

Roger Snyder | 00:43:00–00:50:00
we got a question while you have this slide up from michelle she said we have a clear racy yet we continue to collide in these roles my first thought is i wonder if the racy is truly clear someone wrote it down but people haven’t really bought into it

my suggestion is to look at the areas where there are collisions and double-click there especially on the rs and as is it really clear who is responsible and who is accountable and even what “responsible” means for that activity sometimes you have to split an activity into smaller ones to remove ambiguity and reduce conflict

the other problem i see is you have a chart and nobody follows it so it’s just a document on a shared drive not a living agreement

Kenny Kranseler | 00:43:00–00:50:00
yeah i’ve seen racy fail when one department does it alone writes it all down and then pushes it out saying “here’s our racy everyone agree okay great” and nobody was actually involved they didn’t buy in

you really need representatives from each major function in the room as you build it you need to reach consensus on the as and most of the rs you need to push accountability down to the lowest sensible level and you often need a follow-up session to refine the tricky areas

Introducing DACI: Clarifying Decisions

Kenny Kranseler | 00:50:00–00:55:00
the second tool is daci it’s similar to racy in that it defines roles but daci is about decision-making and clarifying the process of getting to and making decisions

it comes from six sigma and its goal is to define and empower a driver the one who makes sure that a decision is actually made and to pair that with a single approver to prevent decisions from being shuffled endlessly around the organization

the four letters in daci are driver approver contributor and informed unlike racy each person can have only one setting for a decision they can drive the decision forward they can approve the decision they can contribute to the decision or they can be informed about the decision but they don’t sit in multiple roles for that same decision

here’s what a daci chart might look like again the rows are key decisions the columns are roles and in the cells you put d a c or i the goal is to be clear who drives the decision to closure and who finally approves it

a benefit of doing this exercise is that you can see how decision-making is actually happening today versus how you want it to happen and you can shift decisions away from endless consensus toward clarity about who really gets to say yes

Combining RACI and DACI

Kenny Kranseler | 00:55:00–01:00:00
when you compare racy and daci one simple way to think about it is that racy is about accountability for work who does what and daci is about authority for decisions who gets to decide what

racy is about stability understanding roles and responsibilities so people don’t step on each other all the time daci is about agility making sure we can drive decisions to closure and execute them quickly

both can be valuable particularly in an organization that has confusion about roles and especially as it relates to product management

Roger Snyder | 00:55:00–01:00:00
we got a question from steve asking what comes first daci or racy my experience is that it varies but i tend to start with racy first let’s figure out who does what and then figure out who decides what as you do daci you may discover changes you want to make in racy so you’re going to iterate a few times

this is also not set in stone it’s something that will evolve over time as you test it and learn how it works in practice

Implementing RACI/DACI & Working with Executives

Kenny Kranseler | 01:00:00–01:07:00
a few best practices for using these tools in the real world first know that this is a process and it will take time to get right you won’t nail it in one workshop you’ll iterate

second get involvement from a variety of teams have representatives from each major function that participates in the process marketing sales product engineering ux program management and so on

third prioritize you don’t need to model every activity or decision on day one start with the most painful ones the ones that everyone is complaining about in your retrospectives where things are falling through the cracks or constantly escalating

fourth expect pushback especially from senior management part of what these tools do is push accountability and decision-making down into the organization and that can feel threatening for some executives they may be used to holding all the as and all the approvals

you’ll need to communicate upward as well as outward helping them see the benefits when we push decisions closer to the work and the customer we get better information and faster outcomes

you also need patience it’s going to take time for people to change their behavior and trust the new model and you may have to show some early wins with smaller decisions to build that trust

Roger Snyder | 01:00:00–01:07:00
we had a question that fits right into this any recommendation on an executive member who doesn’t have an a but assumes it for every project how do you give the real a person the actual accountability

one part is communicating to that executive that “jane has the ball on this one if you want to change the call talk with her but we’re going to look to her for the decision”

another part is showing them that pushing decisions down leads to better outcomes because the people closer to the work and the customer have better data and context

and the last part honestly is comfort it takes time and a few successful examples for that executive to feel comfortable stepping back and not inserting themselves as the approver on every single thing

Audience Q&A: Real-World Role Conflicts

Roger Snyder | 01:07:00–01:15:00
we’ve got a lot of questions coming in we’re not going to be able to answer all of them live but let’s get through a few

one question was about pms and pos when there is no dedicated scrum master so the po ends up acting as the scrum master as well

Kenny Kranseler | 01:07:00–01:15:00
yeah i hate it when pos have to be scrum masters too it happens but it’s definitely not a best practice in that situation i’d look at racy and daci again and see what you can shift to support that person can the product manager take more of the shared responsibilities can senior engineers take on some of the facilitation roles can you gradually grow someone into a dedicated scrum master

Roger Snyder | 01:07:00–01:15:00
another question was whether the product owner should report to the product manager my answer is “it depends” and you really have to watch workload and dynamics it can work fine when the pm has capacity and good people leadership skills sometimes i actually like it when the po reports into engineering and the pm reports into product or marketing because that independence can help create a healthy push-and-pull but again there isn’t a single right answer

we also had a question asking whether we have a similar chart for splitting responsibilities between product management and product marketing and yes we do we have a blog post that walks through that and we’ll include the link in the follow-up email

Wrap-Up & Next Steps

Roger Snyder | 01:15:00–01:18:00
we’re just about out of time so i want to thank everyone for your participation today and a big thank you to kenny for sharing his experience

we do have a gift for you we created a template you can use for your own racy and daci work it’s an excel sheet with instructions a sample racy matrix and a sample daci matrix including some typical product management activities you can use as a starting point we’ll send the download link in the follow-up email along with the recording of this webinar

we’ve also got some online courses coming up if you’re looking at the broad perspective of product management you might be interested in optimal product management if you’re in a digital product management role then we’ve got upcoming digital product management courses and later this month in the theme of international women’s month we will have a panel discussion about how women can unleash their leadership potential in product management so sign up for that as well

thank you again for joining us today and we look forward to seeing you at our next webinar

Kenny Kranseler | 01:15:00–01:18:00
thank you everyone take care