What do you do?

A lot of times, folks ask me what I do for a living...whenever I say product management, the first thing I hear back is either "What is that?" or "So do you like being a project manager?"

Product management is sort of difficult to define to those outside of the corporate world. I always explain it to folks by saying that a product managers job is to understand the market and work with the team to define a strategy and plan to ensure product success. Sometimes you find that product management reports into marketing, into a technology, or as a stand alone business group.

I also find myself explaining the differences between program, project, and product management to folks. I know I've oversimplified it, but here's my quick and dirty explanation:

• Project - Works to determine when the feature will be released.
• Product - Works to determine what features are important and what the feature is. In some companies the product manger has P&L responsibility.
  
• Program - Across project resource allocation and project coordination. This function can manage one or more project managers for a particular account or product.

Anyways, that enough for today on that little pet peeve :)