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What are the challenges you have encountered establishing the product management function in product areas that do not have it？

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4 Answers
Establishing Product Management
  1. Mckenzie Lock
    Mckenzie Lock

    Netflix Director of Product • 3y

    Common challenges are:

    • Fear that the PM will slow the team down or add too much process
    • Another function has stepped in to fill the PM shoes and is reluctant to give their role up
    • There is a solutions-first (vs. problem-first) mindset
    • Founders have trouble letting go of product decisions as the company grows
    • Talent mismatch - PMs were reporting into other functions which did not know what to look for in PMs
    1,703 Views
  2. Adrianne Wang Martinson
    Adrianne Wang Martinson

    TikTok Head of Product, AI-powered Automated Services | Formerly Airbnb, Microsoft, Salesforce, Box • 4y

    One challenge I encountered as the product lead for a platform team was to identify the product management needs for some of the relatively technical product areas, such as Machine Learning and APIs. I had to justify these needs as many leaders and stakeholders felt that an eng manager or technical program manager were more suitable given their technical knowledge and depth. Realizing the fact that many platform areas are abstract and complicated to understand compared to some user facing featur ...Read More

    1,561 Views
  3. Rosa Villegas
    Rosa Villegas

    Zynga Senior Director of Product, Central Technology • 3y

    I touched on this a bit in previous questions, but some common challenges are: Perception that Product may slow the team down. Some teams are very execution-focused, which can be good, but it's easy for team members to not be able to see the forest through the trees, and potentially get into a situation where they may be doing too many things, or not being focused on the right things.  Unclear or misalignment of goals or priorities - Product can add a lot of value but without a clear idea of the ...Read More

    622 Views
  4. Ibrahim Bashir
    Ibrahim Bashir

    Amplitude Vice President, Product Management • 4y

    The biggest challenge comes from cross-functional partners (engineering, sales, marketing) who may not have prior experience partnering with PMs and aren't bought in to introducing the function. The real value of a PM is to have a dedicated resource thinking about what the highest-leverage activities fro the team are in service of the broader business goals and user problems, but in many orgs that role has been played piecemeal by various folks and solidifying into a formal function can feel pre ...Read More

    467 Views

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