(2022-02-01) Cagan Two In A Box Pm

Martin Cagan: Two in a Box PM. In this article I’d like to talk about the tendency to want to split the product management job in two, referred to as the “two in a box” PM model.

so many people in the product world can’t even agree on what the real role of the product manager is.

the root of this confusion is that as an industry we use the same title – product manager – for two very different situations: feature teams vs product teams.

One of the few things both groups generally agree on is that however you define the job, it’s often too much work for one person.

the way the job is scoped down is the key, and unfortunately, the most common ways of trimming down the role have consequences far worse than most companies realize.

what I’m talking about here in this article is the PM role on an empowered product team

The job of a product manager of an empowered product team is to be responsible and accountable for addressing value and viability risk. The designer covers usability risk, and the tech lead covers feasibility risk. Together, they create a product.

there are a few things that are absolutely critical

Direct Access To Users and Customers

Direct Access to Business Stakeholders

Direct Access to Engineers and Designer

It is in fact the direct, ongoing access to these three constituencies that enables the product manager to make good decisions regarding value and viability.

do not slice up the PM role such that direct access to any of these three is lost.

So, you might be thinking, what’s left to cut? A remarkable amount, it turns out.

• Project Management
• Product Design
• User Research Administration
• Quality Assurance... think test-driven development and a nice suite of unit level regression tests is all they need to do. But in practice, the PM’s end up having to play the QA role... it’s important to note that it’s normal for the PM to be responsible for acceptance testing, but that is a very minor responsibility compared to the much larger quality assurance role.
• Production Ops
• Product Marketing
• People Management

Product Team Size and Scope

If you have a single product manager responsible for providing valuable and viable solutions for more than about 10 engineers, then this may simply be too much for a single product manager to keep up with, and it may be time to split teams.

One last important caveat: There is a real difference between a product manager at an early stage startup, versus at a growth stage or established company. In many early stage startups, there literally are not enough funds to have people dedicated for many of the roles, and in practice the product manager often picks up much of this work.