AMA: Amazon Head of Driver Products, Amazon Relay, Navin Ganeshan on Technical Product Management

First of all, we need to address Amazon's terminology for these roles. A technical product manager at Amazon is generally referred to as a Product-Manager-Technical (PM-T). Whereas a Technical Program Manager (TPM) is a distinct role that sits at the intersection of product, engineering and program management. An Amazon TPM is a unique role that combines business ownership over delivery with high-level technical architecture. They are usually the program glue - that brings together PMTs, enginee ...Read More

A technical product manager at Amazon is generally referred to as a Product-Manager-Technical (PM-T). A PMT can have ownership over a product, a functional area or even a program, but their primary focus is on formulating the vision, the strategy and roadmap for that area. They are also ultimately responsible for the end metrics of adoption, quality and effectiveness of the features they deliver. They are also the primary customer champions synthesizing their current pain-points, as well as anti ...Read More

(Reposting this from a related question)  A technical product manager at Amazon is generally referred to as a Product-Manager-Technical (PM-T). A PMT can have ownership over a product, a functional area or even a program, but their primary focus is on formulating the vision, the strategy and roadmap for that area. They are also ultimately responsible for the end metrics of adoption, quality and effectiveness of the features they deliver. They are also the primary customer champions synthesizing ...Read More

This is definitely a popular topic of discussion amongst PMs, and probably a heated one at times. This is a good post that covers the most common including RICE, KANO and story-maps. https://roadmunk.com/guides/product-prioritization-techniques-product-managers/ Personally, I'm less dogmatic about the specific methodology than the discipline in using some framework, even it's as basic as attaching value-to-effort. Most seasoned PMs will concede that they always have to make tweaks or compromises ...Read More

To be blunt, I think they are critical. Data is the currency for any decision-making, and analytical competencies are exactly what empower product managers, technical or otherwise. For technical PMs, there is also an expectation of data self-sufficiency where they are not as dependent on BI or other engineers for extracting and analyzing data. While I wouldn't necessarily imply that SQL capabilities are absolutely critical, let's just say that analysis and visualization can be a substantial supe ...Read More

To be clear, I don't believe a technical-PM is always a better PM. It comes down to what attributes, passion and curiosity you posess and the direction you want to go. A good technical PM is strongly curious about technology and how it's used to solve the problem. They think of the problem, as well as the soluton, in terms of technology. They are better able to understand abstractions of technology - tech stack, componentization, APIs - etc in the context of product development. Other non-techni ...Read More

In a word, abstraction. A technical PM is usually NOT the most advanced technical person on a team. However, they are able to break through sufficient tech layers to be able to contextualize the tech in the overall product development. They are able to draw the bigger picture of how components fit together, what technology elements are critical. And how to think about investment in each technical area - sucvh as build/buy/partner. In this way, they're not competing with others on technical know- ...Read More

This is a universal challenge for all product owners - how to ensure your roadmaps don't get derailed. I take the perspective that you should expect and accept a certain combination of planned vs opportunistic initiatives. Being overly dogmatic in your roadmap against evolving circumstances is just as bad as not having a strategic roadmap.   Amazon is known for moving quickly, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we don't have structured long-term roadmaps. However our culture and mechnisms en ...Read More

The process of starting with a vision for any product/feature is conceptually simple, but also eludes many product managers who may be more accustomed to being able to chart a path to "somewhere" rather than have to contemplate where that somewhere is. It helps to demysify and de-romanticize the notion of a vision and talk about exactly what mechanisms you can use to describe it.   Amazon's famous approach involves using a PRFAQ as one mechanism to describe that vision. The process of developing ...Read More

A technical product manager has a more substantial role working with engineering teams on core architecture and component design related to a feature. If all product managers have allegiance to different dimensions - business/revenue, customer experience, product/tech strategy, marketing etc - the technical product manager indexes more heavily along the areas of technology design and integration. For most products, feature development usually happens on a longer cadence involving multiple iterat ...Read More