Stop hiring product managers like project managers

"Companies are hiring armies of people with "product manager" on their business cards, but they're treating them like project management with better vocabulary. Frankly I see it a lot with enterprise clients. Teams are drowning in tactical decisions and they're optimizing for activity over outcomes. The result is not ideal: Products that ship on time but solve all the wrong problems. Roadmaps packed with features nobody asked for."

"But that's not what product management is. Product management is about making strategic decisions under uncertainty. It's about understanding users so deeply you can anticipate their needs. It's about saying no to good ideas so you can say yes to great ones. Project managers ask, "How do we build this faster?" Product managers ask, "Should we build this at all?""

"The best product managers don't just execute whatever roadmap is handed to them. They question assumptions, dig into user behavior, and push back when the plan doesn't make sense. Customer obsession over feature factories. Great product managers spend more time with users than stakeholders. They can tell you not just what features customers want, but why they want them and what happens when they don't get them. There will never be a replacement for direct conversation"

Organizations often hire product managers to manage timelines, coordinate stakeholders, and shepherd features through development, effectively treating them as glorified project managers. This leads teams to focus on activity rather than outcomes, producing products that ship on time but solve wrong problems and roadmaps full of unused features. Real product management entails making strategic decisions under uncertainty, deeply understanding user needs, and prioritizing choices that deliver measurable value. Top product managers demonstrate curiosity by questioning assumptions and digging into user behavior. They practice customer obsession by spending time with users to learn why features matter and by saying no to many ideas to focus on great ones.

Read at Fast Company