My goal is to start documenting my thoughts as I really start to dive into why I want to go into product. If I end up saying something interesting or amusing in retrospect, then it’ll be a happy bonus.  

For this first post, we’ll be going big picture. Are product managers even necessary? No, not at all. For the longest time, product managers were relegated to the gallows of the marketing department. The role was a far cry from having the input present at the big kids table with the engineers of today, especially when Agile frameworks made sure the seat was reserved.

During the earlier period, we still ended up with useful products. So why change things now? I believe it all falls to the prompt on how we can continue to make useful, new services in an increasingly saturated tech market. Take the early days of the App Store for example. The possibilities for what could be made were endless with pretty much no previously existing applications. It was very likely that if you and your dev group came up with a novel idea (like an app that allows you to access multiple emails from one location), chances are that idea would end up as a unique service that’ll gain some traction as long as it somewhat works.  

In 2022, you’re going to have to get a bit more specific than that. 99.99% of the time, there’s going to be some solution out there that can accomplish your idea already. This doesn’t mean that development shouldn’t take place, but when it does it needs to be done with purpose. In my opinion, the product manager is the person that needs to obsess over that purpose and consistently test the value of why we are building this thing in the first place. If it makes sense to build, how do achieve that without spending more money on development than the revenue we’ll get after we finish this thing?

These kinds of constant questioning can really impede the progress of an engineer, which is why it’s perfect to push it off to someone whose purpose is to bring out the best of the whole dev team. Product managers are not really necessary at all. But they can definitely make your life easier, and provide value as the tech industry continues to mature.