As a product manager, I was once criticized for not being passionate enough about a specific technology. This feedback took me by surprise and prompted me to reflect on the role of technology in product management.
This technology had a fervent following, with a vision of transforming the world. You either 'believed' in it or you didn't, almost like a religion. Yes, I'm talking about blockchain. In this case, a particular decentralized protocol based on ethereum was underpinning the main product and I was told was I was not the best product manager I could be if I didn’t "believe" in it.
I don't have anything against blockchain, on the contrary; I am a firm believer in Web 3.0 and a future where individuals control their data, using it to their benefit securely and privately. However, I am not married to blockchain or any specific technology. Let me set this straight, I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with blockchain. On the contrary, I believe it’s a great technology to solve many problems, but I’m not fanatical about it. As a product person, I’m fanatical about user’s problems not one technology or another one. Let’s talk about why that’s important for a product manager.
The feedback came from a technically adept person. Sometimes, technical experts can interpret criticism of a technology's suitability for a specific problem as a critique of the technology itself.
In product development, the opposite issue can arise: engineers might become overly invested in their preferred technologies. With deep knowledge of their 'hammer,' everything starts to look like a nail. Engineers may attempt to solve every problem with their preferred tool. And it makes sense, it takes a long time to master a particular tool or technology and once you do, you don't want to throw that away. And the truth is you don’t have to. To a certain degree I think it's okay for engineers to apply this logic, the trade-offs of researching and learning new technologies for a particular problem can be quite big versus using the tools that you are familiar with to solve the problem at hand, even if they are not the most efficient ones to solve it. You have to consider the opportunity cost of how much time and effort are you going to spend trying to find a better tool vs just getting the job done with the tool you know.
For a product manager, the approach should be different: you should not be tied to any specific tool or technology. Technologies evolve, and there is always something better on the horizon, driving progress.
As a product manager, your commitment should be to the problem and the customers it affects. Your quest is to identify demand. Your job as a PM is not to build something shiny to attract demand but to identify demand and build a solution for it. Product managers must thrive in the problem space, understanding its nuances, the market landscape, and the key players—users— and find the connections between all the dots. That’s the input we use to put together a product strategy, product roadmap and go-to-market strategy.
Products exist in the problem space, while engineering resides in the solution space. This separation is essential. Now, where does tools and technology belong to? Tools and technology belong to the solution space -to engineering-; and that means product people should detach themselves from any technology when it comes to understanding the difficulties your customers face and bringing a solution for them. A product manager -a technical one in particular- needs to understand the technology that underpins its product, but not be married to it. Being attached to the hip to a particular technology as it will only constraint your ability as product manager to articulate and visualize a potential solution. If you are tied to a technology, the solution will be limited by the technology’s capabilities, restraining your abilities to articulate an optimal solution for the problem at hand.
PMs should be passionate about identifying customer problems. Engineers should focus on crafting elegant solutions, choosing the right tools for the job.