As the discipline of product management matures, there is often talk in the PM community about a product management manifesto, a set of aspirational principles that guide us, similar to what the Agile manifesto did for software development. Here is my take on what it should say:
As product managers, we have come to value:
Positive outcomes over cool features. While we love building stuff, our calling is to delight our customers and deliver value to our businesses. We will resist the urge to build things that the world doesn’t need and waste the talent of our product teams.
Empowered teams over top-down decision making. We believe the best work gets done by small, cross-functional, highly collaborative teams with shared objectives and the authority to make decisions for themselves.
Customer needs over internal priorities. We don’t ignore internal priorities. But we realize that while we are focusing on our internal stakeholders, there is a chance our competition is focusing on the customer. And ultimately the customer is the one who picks the winner.
Serving those who care over those who don’t. It’s unlikely that our product has mass market appeal. That’s okay because we can make a good living serving those who our product is meant for. We won’t let the critics and the disinterested distract us from serving our customers who care.
Shipping to learn over shipping when perfect. We realize the limitations of our intuition and know that the best products are built with users, not for users. We look for quick, inexpensive ways to test our assumptions and we are honest in our assessment of market signals. We treat adjustments to our plans as part of our process, not a failure of our process.
Ecosystems over ownership. Our products go farther when others can extend them, other products can integrate with them, and users can contribute to them. We believe the benefits of empowering and enabling the members of our community outweighs the cost of giving up some control of our products.
Contributing to society over winning at all costs. We recognize that software powers the world. We care about how our products are used and take personal responsibility for what we create. We aspire to build products that do more than just serve the bottom line.
Accessibility and inclusion over focusing on the ‘typical’ customer. We are mindful that potential users of our products may not look like us, think like us, act like us, or have access to the same things we have. We believe that empowering a diverse community of users, partners and stakeholders invites opportunity, and is simply the right thing to do.
These are the principles that guide me as a product leader.