As you look at upcoming trends, what key areas or focuses do you think PMs should focus on to help them stay marketable?

After the many rounds of layoffs in both big and small tech over the last few years, PMs are being asked to become more well-rounded business leaders -- not just be the interface to engineering. This isn't a question of "doing more with less" (I really hate that expression) but about doing the work that uniquely creates the most leverage for the organization. It's not sufficient to know how to write PRDs or user stories anymore; you have to understand how to run your product or domain as a business. In practice, this means there are three areas that most PMs need to uplevel their skills in:

• Positioning and messaging. You can't just expect your marketing/PMM counterpart to do this for you; your ability to do this for your current product, or when proposing new features, is going to be critical for your success. Figuring out how to describe a problem and solution space as concisely as possible, with strong written arguments, is a make-or-break for what gets funded in a resource-limited environment.

• Quantitative business case development. Gone are the days when PM could simply tell a story, hand-wave over ROI, and get their initiatives funded. While it's true that in the world of PM -- and specifically, in new product development -- much of the data is unavailable or untrustworthy, you still have to take a swing at ROI. For big digs, I ask all of my PMs to create a back-of-the-napkin NPV (net present value) analysis based on what they know. Is the model going to be accurate? No way. But the point is to get them to start thinking about the drivers of both revenue and costs, how long it will take for an initiative to make its investment back, how the cost profile of the initiative will impact pricing & packaging, etc.

• Written and oral communication. I alluded to this previously, but the ability to concisely, clearly and confidently express yourself in both written deliverables and presentations -- especially to senior/executive management -- is the number one determinant not only of your management team's confidence in you, but a predictor of your likelihood to get a promotion. Gone are the days when your director or GPM will cover for you; they don't have time to rewrite your memos or presentations to make them comprehensible for senior management. If you know you are weak in this area, or if your manager has told you this, there are many resources available out there. The most important one is simply to practice a lot until you get better.

Hope that you enjoy your career break and that you use some of the time to invest in yourself before coming back to PM!