Articles
Product Management / Head of PM / VP PM / SVP PM / CPO are techno-commercial roles.
Business acumen is a must-have, not a nice-to-have alongside technology/product understanding and industry experience.
A Product Manager is not the same as an Application Expert or someone in a Product Support role. These roles work together.
The “Eierlegende Wollmilchsau” is one person, with the job title of PM, who can serve all three roles at the same time. Such a person is unlikely to be found within any sensible timeframe, or to remain in such a role for long.
A CPO/Head/VP/SVP who cannot or will not be a challenging sparring partner for his technology, sales, marketing etc. counterpart(s) is merely a manager of departmental resources with a fancy title.
This is true for B2B SaaS and software-enabled hardware-centric product portfolios.
Rich Mironov is absolutely right. Endless analysis of data in Excel is worth little if you cannot navigate the politics of an organization and your product’s/venture’s stakeholders.
