(2021-10-29) Cagan Process People

Martin Cagan: Process People. For many years I’ve subscribed to the idea that in a product organization, there are essentially two types of contributors: makers and managers.... The only real question has been regarding product managers.

In a feature team, the product manager plays much more of a manager type role – not a people manager but rather a stakeholder manager and project manager. However, on an empowered product team, the product manager plays much more of a maker role, albeit a less pure version of maker than an engineer or designer.

But the point of this article is that over the past decade or so, we’ve witnessed a rise in a third type of contributor, which I’ll call here process people.

Different processes often dictate specific roles, such as the Product Owner and the Scrum Master roles for Agile teams, or the Black Belt role for Six Sigma organizations. cf (2021-06-09) Cagan The CSPO Pathology

In many companies, the latest trend in this dangerous direction is the rise of product ops.

one of the most common definitions is to have a person, or in many cases, an entire team of people, that exist to provide the process, tools and methods for the broader product organization.

as organizations grow, there are two main ways today that organizations attempt to scale. One is by scaling their leaders (the managers). The other is by scaling their process.

I am convinced that the vast majority of the people I meet in these roles have good intentions. They sincerely want to help their companies.

But in practice, they often cause far more harm than good.

First, I can’t help but notice that so many of these process people have never performed either the maker role or the manager role in a strong product company.

Second, in many cases, these process people are hired because the managers are not willing or able to do their job – especially in terms of coaching and developing their makers.

Third, process is a lot like religion. People get fanatic about their favorite processes, and it’s very difficult to reason with a fanatic. (cargo cult)

finally, if you believe as I do that there is no one right way of doing product, then the very notion of standardizing a process across a large organization just means that you’ll be institutionalizing a process that will be a poor fit for most teams. Gardening Your Product Process

Process People Continued.

there were also people that were confused by what I was trying to say.

partly it is because there are so many different definitions of “product ops” out there and people read the article from the perspective of their own definition.

I have so far identified more than six distinctly different definitions of the product ops function. And many companies have different combinations of these definitions

My intention is to write more about these various definitions, and explain which ones I think can truly help an organization, and which ones are just old problems reappearing under a new name.

Let’s put aside for a moment the issue of the many definitions out there, and instead look at just one of the more prevalent definitions, which is to have some number of people dedicated to improving the productivity and effectiveness of at least the product managers. This would be around standardizing the tools, methods, practices, training, and onboarding of the product managers.

At smaller companies, this is normally squarely the responsibility of your manager(s) of product management.

But in larger companies, there is definitely an argument to be made that there are economies of scale to be had by consolidating this work.

But the most common way I have seen this addressed at strong companies is with a principal product manager (or other senior individual contributor product manager).

These people usually have zero desire to become a people manager, but they deeply love the craft of product, and are motivated by taking on the toughest challenges on the most critically important product teams.

Yet in so many companies that have been setting up this function, the people with this responsibility are not principal product managers, but rather Agile Coaches, or project or program managers.

This is the same reason I highlighted the problem of so many product managers being trained by Agile Coaches rather than experienced product leaders.