The role of product manager is ever evolving, and with the onset of the Agile, the speed of change is increasing. Two recent posts deal with somewhat different, but important aspects of the responsibilities of product managers:

Dean Leffingwell discusses the differences between product owner vs. product manager. Dean doesn’t believe there’s enough product managers in most companies for them to be the product owner (according to the Agile Manifesto Principle: Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project). In a situation where the product manager has too many products, meeting with the team every day and ‘owning’ the product is difficult. The main reason: to really get a grasp on where your product is headed you need to get out of the office. If you’re not in the office you cannot meet with the product team every day. So it ultimately comes down to definitions. In your experience is the product manager the ‘owner’ of the product?

On a somewhat different, but equally interesting topic, Peter Ganza asks fellow product managers whether they create and use product management roadmaps. He’s not talking about an external product roadmap (these are common), but an internal roadmap that establishes the direction the product will take over six, 12 or 18 months. Is this a common practice? Peter posted a survey that’s worth taking a minute to answer.