“Please help: what should we look for in a Product Manager? We are kind of clueless” Good question! How do you know if someone got what it takes to become great in Product Management? Leaders, managers, recruiters and organizations as a whole are still struggling to answer this question for a role that has not yet matured.
Well unlike with engineers, you probably don’t give them codility tests. Also, there’s no Master in Product Management like you can hire for people who majored in Computer Science. Most people somehow just transitioned into it.
Hence, I started to dive really deep into the questions: “what makes one PM the absolute best and another just average”? If you know what makes great PM’s stand-out, then you also know what organizations can hire and train for.
Why is this so important?
I personally believe that Product Management is becoming more and more important for organizations. The number one problem in software development is still that most software built is not, or rarely being used. This means that the return-on-invest on most decisions isn’t positive. And who’s responsible for deciding what’s built by the teams to maximize value? Correct, in most cases it’s the Product Manager or someone else with the decision making power to maximize value for the product.
Who benefits from these maturity models?
This article is aimed at leaders in Product Management, those who help others grow in their role and also hire Product Owners, Product Managers, Heads of Product or other related titles. I don’t aim to solve the never ending discussion of PO vs PM here, so I just continuously use the word Product Manager. It’s relevant for those people that make decisions about which software is being made and why.
If we can help the group of people active in product management mature in their role, then many people make better decisions, meaning companies make less costs for building barely profitable software, users are more happy with software and team members also enjoy their jobs more because they work on products that actually make an impact. It’s a win, win, win.
In this post I will evaluate the best and most well known Product Manager Maturity Models I found throughout the years. They’re ordered from my least favorite to my personal favorite. The better we understand what makes one employee excel at their job while the other is stuck in the boring middle of mediocrity, the easier we can train and help our people grow.
Definition of a Product Management Maturity Model
A Product Management Maturity Model is a framework that outlines the progression of skills, competencies and responsibilities of a Product Manager within an organization.
Purpose
The purpose of a model is to provide guidance to individuals and organizations to help where they stand and what steps they can take to advance to higher levels of impact.
If you know the right model, then you can also find the right people that would potentially fit in this model. Hence, you can solve the hiring question as well.
Which models will I evaluate?
- The PM wheel by Petra Wille
- The Scrum.org Maturity Model by Robbin Schuurman
- DRIVEN by Geoff Watts
- Product Management Framework by Roman Pichler
- Product Manager competencies by Ravi Metha
Now let’s start with evaluating the models ranked on my personal preferences:
5. The PM Wheel by Petra Wille
A framework to help product managers understand their roles and responsibilities across a range of activities. It’s advertised as “A compass for the PM development journey”.
The first five steps: understand the problem, find a solution, do some planning, get it done and listen & learn to suggest a logical order. The steps can be used to solve any problem. Team, grow! and agile are numbered from 6-8, but they’re not the next steps in the suggested order. While they are all true, the problem with the first five is that it also applies to many other jobs like Engineers, UX Consultants or construction workers.
Besides that, I’m missing important skills that great PM’s have and starting PM’s don’t. One of the measures I personally use to hire is “data fluency”.
Hence, I find the model too confusing to use for measuring product management maturity. I don’t see the coherence and the model is not complete. More on the traits and skills that help more in the next models.
4. The Scrum.org Maturity Model by Robbin Schuurman
This model is taught in many product certifications classes and (too) often leads to a lot of misconceptions. Product Managers are taught the model, realize that they are from a Sponsor or Entrepreneur and feel disappointed. So, let’s take a closer look at this model.
The model basically says the more authority a Product Manager takes, or is given by the organizations, the higher the expected benefits.
The model discusses five types of Product Manager:
- The Scribe: a product manager is seen as a backlog administrator
- The Proxy: also has a bit authority regarding the order of the backlog
- The Business Representative: this person is the voice of the customer and often the Subject Matter Expert or Domain Knowledge Holder.
- The Sponsor: also has budget responsibility on top of the other tasks
- The Entrepreneur: someone with a strong vision on the market, customers and product
I like the part of the model where a Product Manager that grows goes from more inwards focussed and close to the current sprint to more externally oriented and more focussed on the roadmap and vision. I do recognize the fact that junior PM’s can be really busy working on managing the current sprint, even when they have a lot of authority.
The big misconception, however, is that it says something about the maturity of PM’s. It says more about the organizations they work for. In a small company a junior PM can act as an entrepreneur, while most organizations still have many layers and separate finance departments, so then the business representative is the ‘highest’ level possible.
Perhaps I’ll write another post on Product Organization Maturity Models. Then, I think this model is better suited to analyze.
3. DRIVEN by Geoff Watts
In his book Product Mastery Geoff Watts describes six skills any PM can develop to become a great Product Manager. The terms speak for itself:
- Decisive
- Ruthless
- Informed
- Versatile
- Empowering
- Negotiable
I agree with all six skills, or traits. For example, you do need to be a bit ruthless and negotiable at the same time. A junior PM is often not good in both yet, so the skills can be of great help to help them grow in their role. However, in my opinion, the best PM’s also have more skills than these six traits. A great PM has vision, can work with data and designs if needed and has a clear and organized backlog. Many of those things are lacking in this model.
The biggest problem with this model? You can rank well on all 6 and still be a lousy PM.
2. Product Management Framework by Roman Pichler
Roman Pichler did a great job with his framework. It’s the most complete model we’ve discussed thus far. There are six core competencies and six supporting areas. The core areas include for example: Strategy, Roadmap, Vision, User Experience. Supporting area’s are things such as release management and market knowledge. If you look at the whole model you might think: “that’s a lot, how can I ever be good at all of them?”
Well, that’s true. You can’t be the best in all of them. You can however train yourself to become better in all of them. Knowing a bit about all them can make you a great Product Manager. Knowing nothing about the market or knowing nothing about user experience, will likely mean your PM’s are not that mature yet.
Though some things can be said about the model, I think it can be a good framework for assessing your Product Managers.
What you might miss in this model are more soft skills, such as influencing people and being liked by your team. Also, it feels like there are some duplicates/overlapping areas. i.e. why two different core areas for product roadmap and product backlog? Perhaps you can then have a look at the traits from Geoff Watts if you want to focus more on soft skills or traits.
1. Product Manager competencies by Ravi Metha
This model is my personal favorite. It’s simple, yet sophisticated enough that you can almost never score the max score on all items. It includes technology, data, user, ownership and some skills such as managing up. What I enjoy most of it is ‘impact’, or as I like to say “proven results”. You can deliver a lot, but if you don’t make any impact, you’re not top of class.
The downsides that of this model are related to the questions and the survey to determine in which level you are. I believe that Ravi is American and that’s what you notice once he introduces eight (!) levels. This to me feels super hierarchical, which is more common in the US than here in The Netherlands. Another point is that the questions are not always clear to me. So, if you decide to evaluate and train your PM’s according to this model you might want to have a careful look at how you use the model.
Nonetheless, I feel Ravi was best able to plot 12 different competences related to four core areas in one model.
Concluding thoughts on the models
First of all, evaluating product management maturity models is complex business. Nobody is equally strong in everything and each situation might require different skills. However, I truly believe that you at least need a clear overview of the skills competencies you’re looking for to build a strong product team.
Second, what you might have noticed as well is that all models differ quite a lot.The frameworks shown as a wheel work best for me. If you are higher up in the chain, you need more “management related skills”, however you still need to know how to work with data and how to get customer insights. Otherwise you’re just a great manager or leader.
I hope that this article helped with what to look for in hiring Product Managers. I also hope it helped with understanding what distinguishes great Product Managers from average ones and lastly I hope that this article helps you with growing your managers who are responsible for the product people in the organization. Because let’s be honest, how many of them actually know if somebody got what it takes?