The Product Manager represents the voice of the customer and business stakeholders (such as Business Owner and Business Sponsor) to the entire value stream or program (in a program-based organization). This includes writing the top-level descriptions of Capabilities that need to be created to deliver value to the customer and stakeholders.

The Product Manager also passes strategically-important development feedback to the business stakeholders in case they can adjust their capabilities plans to reduce costs/impacts, without hurting organizational goals.

Alternate or related roles:

• Business Owner (especially for small organizations with small systems)
• Business Product Owner (BPO)
• Program Manager/Project Manager (adding PM duties highly discouraged)

Explore this role further in the Product Manager Reading Path.

Resources related to Product Manager

Agile Product Management | FLEX from Product Management to the Team (Article)
An Executive’s Guide to Agile | Effective Agile at Scale (Blog Entry)
Capability (Article)
Choosing Requirement Format (Article)
Controlling Work-in-Process (WIP) (Article)
DA VSC - Quick Reference (Blog Entry)
Decomposing a Capability Into MBIs (Article)
Decomposing a Feature Into Stories (Article)
Decomposing an MBI into Features (Article)
Do We Push, Plan or Pull Our Work? (Article)
Example RACI Chart for Lean-Agile Roles (Article)
Groupthink and Fear as Team Killers (Blog Entry)
How Do We Align People / Teams to the Work To Be Done? (Article)
How Is Work Within the Program Being Sequenced? (Article)
How Should We Manage the Number of Items in the Portfolio? (Article)
How Should Work at the Portfolio Level Be Sequenced? (Article)
How Will Architectural Capabilities Be Handled? How Will Architecture Be Prioritize Against Business Needs? (Article)
How Will We Make Visible Our Work at the Program Level? (Article)
How Will We Make the Work at the Portfolio Level Visible? (Article)
Identifying Classes of Service (Article)
Is This a Transition or an Implementation? (Article)
Iteration Planning Meeting (Article)
Lean Portfolio Management (Blog Entry)
Lean-Agile Budgeting (Blog Entry)
Management and Trust (Blog Entry)
Metrics (Article)
Middle Management and Lean-Agile (Blog Entry)
Overview of Roles (Article)
Product Manager (Article)
Product Manager: Acceptance TDD (Article)
Product Manager: Alternatives for the Role (Article)
Product Manager: Choosing a Requirement Format (Article)
Product Manager: Decomposing a Capability into MBIs (Article)
Product Manager: Estimation (Article)
Product Manager: Iteration 0 (Article)
Product Manager: Meetings (Article)
Product Manager: Overview of Roles (Article)
Product Manager: Practices (Article)
Product Manager: Product Demo and Review (Article)
Product Manager: Resources for the Product Manager (Article)
Product Manager: Responsibilities (Article)
Product Manager: Writing a Capability (Article)
Product Portfolio Management: Essential for Agile at Scale (Blog Entry)
The Net Objectives Guardrails System (Blog Entry)
Using Guardrails to Tie Business to Technology (Blog Entry)
Using Visual Controls (Article)
What Is the Budgeting Cycle? (Article)
Will We Focus on Improving People or Improving the System? (Article)
Writing a Capability (Article)