From project manager to product manager

The transition begins

I have been inspired by my colleague Janet McLean's blog about moving from developer to BA. I have just moved from running an agile team in a role that combined a line manager and project manager to a role doing product management for MYOB's product AccountRight Live.

I'm really pleased with the new role. I have been contributing for 4 years on building, planning, promoting this thing, and it's great now to join my product mangement colleagues and understand the clients, their problems and drive some great changes to the offering that will make ar live the best product it can be.

The change has been gradual. Staying within the same organisation means everyone has to adjust. There have been quite a few situations where I have had to bite my tongue and step back to watch the team play out the problem. I would have facilitated in my old role, but now I am a stakeholder.

it's also been great to see how Dan Aragao from thought works has brought a real team empowerment approach to the team. It's wonderful and really highlights that agile is all about the people collaborating and talking. A spec may be voluminous but a conversation keeps you learning the problem and adjusting the solution. Discipline keeps the iteration tight and achievable.

What's the new role like?

I've been asked this a lot. My first few answers were garbled, and like the guy in "the 100 days action plan" says you have to sell yourself. So I changed from "yep almost a product manager, just closing out the last release" to "I'm really looking forward to it, planning the features for the next release and learning the new role." I've had a lot of support and guidance which has been great.

I've found when people discover you're a product manager in the organisation you get hit with a different set of requests. Its been surprising for me that I find they are requests I'm interested in finding a solution to, and so it's been getting more fun looking in to them all. Everybody wants a change in the product. Be it bugs fixed, new features, guidance on what the product does or how it should do it. I get asked for what's coming up and how we should think about it.

The project management skills are becoming more and more useful. I'm finding there's a lot of room for organisation and facilitation. There are tactical elements that help guide the information flow into and out of product management. Being able to illustrate the problem and facilitate a team to think through a solution then track the outcome has been a boon.

The networks in the organization are changing for me too. I have always known people in the Business, and other divisions. However those people now have a different significance and we need to work together with a lot closer motivations now.

The example of both of networks and project management come to mind because one of my early observations has been about corralling client feedback. I'll post more on this later, but I'm now working with a different set of stakeholders to provider better information into the development team rather than asking for that information as the end recipient.

Next steps

I hope to make a difference to Australian nd New Zealand business. MYOB is a great place to do that. I'm looking forward to understanding client need and devising offers that create a great experience and increase profitability to our clients. It's all being done in an agile way. Here's to the future and the product business.

 

 

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