Thread by @lissijean

Reflecting on the last decade in #prodmgmt.

Turning it into a blog post, but going to frame up some observations here from my own experience.

What else have you seen? We've come a long way, but we still have far to go.

/1

2014: "I do not need Product Managers, I can run my company myself, I have the strategy."

2019: "How do I hire a CPO? I need them yesterday."

Founders realizing they can't do it all on their own, that Product Management is a career, and an important skill for the exec team. /2

2011: "You are crazy for joining a startup, Melissa. What are you even doing there? What is Product Management? You should have stayed at Barclays."

2019: "I'm going to go get my MBA so I can be a product manager."

Product, and product in startups, is now the hot job. /3

2014: "We don't need Product Management help, we need design help. Can you just teach us UX?"

2019: "I have 800 Product Owners who have never done the role before, can you help train them?"

With Scrum came the POs, and with the new POs, came the interest for real #prodmgmt. /4

2013: "My ppl are not allowed to talk to customers. It is too risky. We will get sued. We know what we're doing."

2019: "Duh, of course I want my people talking to customers. Get them out of the building."

Executives realized the importance of being close to their customers. /5

2013: "We don't do experiments here, Melissa. We are a real business."

2018: "Can you teach people how to do MVP experiments? How do we write hypotheses well? How do we run it in B2B"

Managers got less afraid of experimentation. They started to see the value. /6

2011: "Product reports to the VP of Engineering."

2019: "Product reports to the CPO."

We started seeing the need for product leadership, even at the largest of companies. /7

2011: "What is a user story?"

2019: "How do I write a good user stories that can get into Jira correctly?"

We still haven't quite gotten down "outcomes over outputs" yet, but it's moving in a better direction. /8

2013: "What is this #Agile thing? It sounds like something we should be doing."

2019: "If someone says 'that's not #agile' one more time I'm going to quit"

We took some things a little too far, without really understanding them. There's work to be done. /9

2016: "I want a product manager who can be great at writing specification documents. We need PRDs"

2019: "I want a PM who is good at strategy, and can help us realize our business goals. Where do I find them?"

We started to realized that #prodmgmt was not just about specs. /10

Predictions for the next decade:
- Strategy and #prodmgmt becoming more connected
- More CPOs and leadership for product.
- A lot more leaders becoming CPOs w/o prior product experience
- ProductOps critical to scaling
- Balance of the business + customer goals
- More PMs!