Excerpts from “Behind Every Great Product: The Role of the Product Manager” by Martin Cagan, Silicon Valley Product Group: Behind every great product you will find a good product manager, in the sense we describe here. We have yet to see an exception to this rule. Product ideas can come from any number of sources. Your job as product manager is to evaluate these product ideas and decide which product ideas are worth pursuing, and which are not. The art of product management is to combine a deep understanding of your target customer’s needs and desires with the capabilities of your engineering team and the technologies they have to work with in order to come up with a product definition that is both compelling and achievable. Of the hundreds of possible and even desirable features in the product, which are the few that are actually essential to… Read more →