This is a light-hearted walkthrough of product managers for designers, intended to help bridge the gap in understanding about the different roles and how to make the product manager / designer relationship stronger and more productive.

1. Getting the Most from
your Product Manager
A tale from the other side
Adam Nash
August 26, 2011

2. Product Managers
Complaints
• Too short term focused
• Too metrics focused
• Don’t define the “user” or “use case” well
• Don’t care about quality
• Want fast not great
• Prioritize increments over transformation

3. How You See Yourselves

4. How You See Yourselves

5. How You See Yourselves

6. How You See Yourselves

7. How They See You

8. How They See You

9. How They See You

10. How They See You

11. How You See Them

12. How You See Them

13. How You See Them

14. How You See Them

15. How They See Themselves

16. How They See Themselves

17. How They See Themselves

18. How They See Themselves

19. What Makes a Great
Product Manager
Business UX
Technology

20. What Do We Demand
of Product Managers?
• Strategy
How do we win the game, and how do we
keep score?
• Prioritization
What are the steps from here to there, and
what order do we do them in?
• Execution
For this phase, what’s the list of what has to
get done, and are we on track?

21. Results Matter
• In the end, we judge product managers by
whether they “win games”
• They don’t play the game, but they are
judged by the record of their products
• They cover any gaps. No excuses.
• Responsibility, often without authority

22. How do you get the
most from them?
• Explicitly require them to fill expectations:
strategy & metrics, prioritization, execution
• Recognize you’ll be more risk tolerant of radical change in
some cases
• Recognize you’ll be more risk averse around inconsistency
or quality
• Use your insights, user focus, empathy, and inspiration to
avoid problems and to create new solutions
• Visualization is your superpower. Over producing to frame
discussions & decisions is often the right approach

23. PM &
Design