I recently had an interesting discussion with some colleagues at a networking event about the differences in the roles and responsibilities of the product management function across organizations. In many organizations, the product team is seen as a jack of all trades and fills gaps between other teams within the organization. In a startup, this is usually acceptable and expected; however, as an organization scales, it is best to clearly delineate product-building functions.

Let’s break this down by asking the 5 Ws (and an H)

Why

I firmly believe that the “why” is the most important question to answer when building any product. The “why” forms the vision for the organization and aligns with the overall business objectives. While this is usually defined by the executive team or senior leadership, it’s the product manager’s responsibility to define why the specific product matters to the customers and organization. Deliverables are vision decks, positioning statements, strategy statements, and OKRs.

Who

A product manager’s superpower is knowing the customer and market, enabling them to define who we are building for by identifying the target audience and their needs. The product team will work with customer success and sales to help refine the target audience of the product. Product also collaborates with the marketing team for go-to-market messaging and positioning; however marketing owns that function. Deliverables tend to include personas, journey maps, and market data.

What

The product team defines the problem to solve and prioritizes solutions based on impact and feasibility. The product team collaborates with UX or design to translate the problem into a user-centric experience and with engineering or architects to assess the feasibility of different solutions. Deliverables include problem statements, backlogs, and user stories.

When

The “when” is a shared responsibility across all teams within an organization which requires collaboration between product, engineering, and project management. The product team sets a target release date based on market dynamics. The engineering team reviews the requirements and provides estimates while surfacing risks that might impact timelines. Based on this feedback, together engineering and product will set a target release date. Project management is then responsible for tracking progress, identifying slippage, and coordinating updates to stakeholders. While these teams all influence when a product will be released, the product team is ultimately accountable for integrating these inputs and deciding when the product will go to market. Deliverables include roadmaps, sprint plans, and release timelines.

Where

Product identifies where the product will be distributed while marketing determines where the customers will become aware of the product. One way to think about “where” is to consider the channels in which the target audience (from the “who”) wants to have the product delivered. Do they require a cloud strategy, an on-premise installation, or a third-party plugin? Deliverables include platform requirements or distribution strategy.

How

Engineering owns the “how”. They are responsible for designing the technical architecture and writing the product’s code. The UX/Design team supports engineering by defining how the product will look and feel. Engineering also receives support from the QA and DevOps teams for ensuring quality, scalability, and reliability. Deliverables include technical blueprints, prototypes, the codebase, and CI/CD pipelines.

Keep in mind that some of these functions vary across organizations or may even have different names. I have found this to be a useful framework for delineating roles and responsibilities. I encourage you to look at some of your day-to-day tasks. Do they align with the tasks above? Why not? It may not be a bad thing; however if a product manager is spending their time reporting on timelines instead of being in the market, this could lead to an organization falling behind due to a blind spot to market dynamics.