Vision...

A product manager is responsible for doing many things...especially if you reference frameworks like pragmatic marketing and zig zag marketing. But over the last week or so I have found that much of what the product manager is doing has to do with vision. Creating a vision for others is good leadership and essential for creating teams of people who must work together to produce something...like software.

Vision for product managers starts with the vision to see software that doesn't exist yet. You need to understand the needs of markets and hear all kinds of people giving their suggestions for new features...but the whole vision must be articulated by the product manager. This vision is used to get financial funding for the project, it is used to get the team excited and understanding what exactly it is they are building. As the product development progresses, the vision is used over and over again to make sure that you don't get distracted by the details, but accomplish the details while staying focused on an end result that is still many sprints away. Vision is used to decide at what point the product is complete enough for an initial v1 launch into the market, and when it does launch, vision is used to articulate to the sales team how to communicate and articulate the benefits of this product so that sales can be realized.

Vision and the ability to communicate that vision is clearly essential for the product manager. If this is something that you would like to be better at...I would highly recommend the book, Leading at a Higher Level by Ken Blanchard. Yes, he is the author of the One Minute Manager. Leading at a Higher Level has some great practical advice for developing and leading with vision. It is very relevant for product managers.