I’ve been getting this question a lot lately: what do you think makes a good product manager for software development? (no idea why I’m getting this question more often these days :) ) And as with any question you get asked a lot (what’s your favorite color?) you start structuring your answer and eventually repeating yourself again and again (blue).

So I thought it would be fun to post it here as well.

Deep technical understanding

In order to develop software products, the product manager needs to understand the technology, often at a level of a very competent engineer. It’s necessary but not sufficient table stakes. Why is that so important?

First of all, people who don’t know technology and what’s possible and what’s not, tend to dream up crazy, hypothetical products. That’s exciting, but it’s hard when you have a team of pragmatic engineers with an arsenal of real technology who need to build a real, working, useful product. Or you have the opposite problem of not knowing what the technology can do, and the resulting product doesn’t utilize the full potential of the technology.

Second, when you spend more than half your time working with engineers, you better speak like a geek, or else there won’t be any respect to go around for you. And no respect means no progress on delivering a product. Sorry man.

Speed of execution and juggling skills

Product managers are measured by the products they ship. And for good reasons, since that’s their job. Easy? Well, it’s just a matter of understanding what the user wants, measuring the performance of the product, working with operations, legal, production, strategic partnerships, business development and sales, etc, etc. And make it happen fast. Very fast.

The best product managers know how to juggle this mess, and understand that the best way to understand your product is to have a shipping product. So it’s important to ship early and iterate quickly. It’s a never ending battle, and it can be exhausting, but great product managers can never give up. The users need the product, and you need to deliver it to them.

Which leads us to the third, and arguably most critical ability of a good product manager…

Obsessive enthusiasm about the product experience

This is the one that’s easiest to understand, hardest to master, and most often lacking in product managers. If you don’t care, why should anyone else?

Why is Tivo easier to use than the run-of-the-mill cable company’s DVR? Why are some bank’s ATMs better than other’s? Why are Apple computers cooler than Acer’s? Because they care.

Obsessive enthusiasm makes you care about details. Obsessive enthusiasm makes you complain when you see the tiniest thing wrong. Obsessive enthusiasm gives you energy to make the product better. Obsessive enthusiasm is contagious. Obsessive enthusiasm makes the whole team build a better product. Obsessive enthusiasm will help you communicate about the product, and will get others excited about it, internally and externally.

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This is not a laundry list, and there are other elements that matter as well. For example, being able to communicate on any level with various audiences in an appropriate manner is extremely important. But I consider these three broad abilities key. And they’re not check boxes; a good product manager needs to be very proficient in all of them, and can always continue to get better at all of them.

What do others think? Any abilities that are more or equally important for people leading product development in software?

- Gummi