Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

The Shapeshifting Product Manager

Product Management roles are, by their very nature, not clearly defined compared to those of our co-workers. Freedom to focus on the things that matter from day to day is part of the job description. It’s absolutely glorious but it can also get us into some serious trouble if we’re not careful.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does a product manager. Our jobs naturally bump up against others in the organisation and it can be hard to tell where product management stops and functions like marketing, corporate strategy, design, research and execution start. And, as shapeshifters, we have a natural tendency to quietly fill the gaps when we see them.

This talk will cover which areas we sometimes need to extend our roles into, where we should step back, what we need to communicate about our jobs to our stakeholders and what we neglect at our peril.

Daniel Kinal

Daniel has been in product management for over 19 years, chiefly working in IT with a focus on B2B products and services. He began his career in marketing, communications and consulting but soon learned that the aspect of marketing he loved most was working out what to build, for whom, and why.

He gets excited about helping businesses become more effective in decision-making, more efficient in their processes and more engaged with their customers. Daniel is at his happiest when waving his arms about in front of a whiteboard with a bunch of smart people, exploring problems and weighing up solutions.

He is passionate about product management as a discipline and is particularly interested in how we can add as much value as we can in this unusual profession.