Product Management – Overview

Note: this document focuses specifically on product management in the context of a "divlet" [small division] in AOL. Related key assumptions are that there is a corresponding "business owner" in each of the brands, and that the "products" are generally online services intended for individuals.

I spent over a decade as a product manager at a number of different companies. One thing I realized was how little we talked about the job of product management. I rarely met product managers from other companies. But I always felt product management was one of the most important functions that when

The classic essay that defined the product manager role - What is product management? What does a product manager do? What makes a great product manager, and how do you become one? Updated in 2022, this is the classic essay by Ken Norton that defined the role of product...

People who know me professionally know that I'm passionate about Product Management.  I truly believe that, done properly, a strong product leader acts as a force multiplier that can help a cross-functional team of great technologies and designers do their best work. Unfortunately, the job descripti

While at Stanford this week I was asked by a number of PM (program manager) candidates to talk about the PM role at Microsoft. The PM role is unique to Microsoft and was actually created in response to developing software that is more usable and at the same time pushes the state of the art of techn

The top 10% of product managers excel at a few of these things. The top 1% excel at most or all of them:

There are Good Product Managers and there are Great Product Managers. There are also Okay Product Managers and Bad Product Managers, but we will focus on the Good and the Great here.

The Top 10 Deliverables of Product Managers