Why companies should have Product Editors, not Product Managers

One of the most compelling organizational things I’ve read about lately is Square’s practice of referring to their product team as Product Editors and the product editorial team, rather than the traditional “Product Management” title. Wanted to share some quick thoughts below about it.

Product managers: One of the toughest and worst defined jobs in tech
The role of “product manager” “program manager” “project manager” is one of the toughest, and worst defined jobs in tech. And it often doesn’t lead to good products. The various PM roles often have no direct reports, but you have the responsibility of getting products out the door. It often becomes a detail-oriented role that are as much about hitting milestones and schedules as much as delivering a great product experience.

Thus PMs sometimes end up in the world of Gantt charts, 100-page spec documents, and spreadsheets rather than thinking about products. Now, all the scheduling and management tasks matter, but it’s too easy for PMs to lead with them rather than leading with products first.

Bad ideas are often good ideas that don’t fit
In the context of literature, books, and newspapers, it’s the job of the editor to pick the good stuff and weave it into a coherent story. You remove the bad stuff, but “bad” can mean it’s a good idea but just doesn’t fit into the story. It’s a compelling and important distinction for consumer internet.

Cohesion and consistency is difficult. When you have an organization with lots of very smart people all with their own good ideas, it’s difficult to decide which path to take. So often, products are compromised as the product “manager” doesn’t feel the responsibility to build up that cohesion as an ends in itself, and instead just tries to do as much as possible with the product given some set timeframe. Focus, people!

Jack Dorsey in his own words
In a recent talk at Stanford, Jack Dorsey describes his idea of editors:

“I’ve often spoken to the editorial nature of what I think my job is, I think I’m just an editor, and I think every CEO is an editor. I think every leader in any company is an editor. Taking all of these ideas and editing them down to one cohesive story, and in my case my job is to edit the team, so we have a great team that can produce the great work and that means bringing people on and in some cases having to let people go. That means editing the support for the company, which means having money in the bank, or making money, and that means editing what the vision and the communication of the company is, so that’s internal and external, what we’re saying internally and what we’re saying to the world – that’s my job. And that’s what every person in this company is also doing. We have all these inputs, we have all these places that we could go – all these things that we could do – but we need to present one cohesive story to the world.”

A video of Jack Dorsey talking about the concept can be seen here:

Lead with product
What’s compelling to me about this is that it really orients the role of product to be about cohesive experiences first and foremost. OK, yes, there’s still schedules first, but it doesn’t drive the thing- great products drive the process.

Similarly, you don’t just jam lots of characters and plot points in a story just because. Even if they are good characters, it can bloat the story. Same with features- sometimes you have many, many good ideas for your product, but if you come to do all of them, you ultimately make it a confusing mess. Instead, you have to “edit” down the feature list until you have a clean, tight experience.

Anyway, I hope to see this trend continue in the tech industry – it sets the right tone for where we should all be focused.

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http://twitter.com/nayafia Nadia Eghbal

Great points. I see the traditional “product manager” as more heavily weighted on requirements and keeping the trains running on time, whereas the future of product (maybe “product editors”!) encompasses thinking about value proposition and how the product is perceived by its users. They still need the technical know-how to understand how to deliver that product efficiently, but they’re shepherding the big picture more than a set of features.
http://twitter.com/makegood Rebecca Davis

First, I love your blog. I’m surprised; I disagree with the sentiment here.

Product management should be profoundly different than project management.

“Product editorship” seems to me a concept that is not an analogous either one of those roles.

As I’m sure you know, product management is a critical role. Product managers take customer requirements, evaluate them against broader market needs and competitive set, prioritize into a product roadmap and then proactively determine how to make it happen: through designers, developers, and QA team, just to name a few parties. To use an analogy, they are commissioning the blueprints and ensuring architects, building engineers, and general contractors are delivering against requirements.

Project managers have another critical role, but largely provide timelines against a strategy that already exists. Project management takes the architect’s drawing and makes it a reality, but it doesn’t determine what the building looks like, that the building should be made out of granite, or that it is a hot dog stand and not the Lincoln Memorial.

“Product editorship” sounds intriguing, but it reflects the fact that CEOs like Jack Dorsey are often and largely the best-paid and most widely heard PR professionals in the company. Yes, it’s their job to weave the activities of a company into a great story to inspire investors, employees and customers. But that story doesn’t necessarily get the product built.

I think what you’re saying is that product management is broken. This is a fair point. But I’d rather fix the issue than confuse it.
http://www.google.com/profiles/David.C.Molina David Molina

Andrew, great post! I remember watching & reading Jack’s remarks on editing. It was a remarkable statement of the facts–that we should be editing at all times not remaining stagnant–and, creating a better product/service for our customers. It’s tough to do. No doubt. Which is why many of us and companies don’t do it. More editors is certainly required. Thanks for the post.
http://twitter.com/vickks Vivek Nanda

Well, we all agree that all these roles: Product Manager, Program Manager, Project Manager, are probably the worst defined in the Tech industry, but I like to see the Product Manager in strong conjunction with the Product Strategy role. So, a Product Manager is not only taking care of the business requirements or product road-map but also creating new ideas or innovative features for the product, and in some cases may be suggest the clients that why your idea can be a game changer in the market. Of course, I really don’t worry about the title, you call it a Product Editor or Product Manager or may be something else.
http://www.facebook.com/albertw1 Albert Wang

in Square their designer actually have title as “Product Designer”. It’s quite common in the valley now that designer is not only work on the user interface or interaction, but also making product design decision.
http://twitter.com/KarlSakas Karl Sakas

Andrew, I agree with Rebecca Davis’ comment that Product Manager and Project Manager can’t be lumped together — but I do think we’re all more closely aligned than it might first seem.

Here’s an alternative to consider, based on something my employer is currently testing.

My agency builds websites for non-profits and other mission-based organizations. In the past, we’ve budgeted for just Project Management time as an ongoing project expense. The reality, though, is that the Strategist needs to stay involved throughout the project, to guide designers and developers on the big picture of what the end user needs — s/he can’t just define the requirements and create the wireframes and leave.

As a project manager, my focus is to keep things moving and on budget. Our hypothesis is that it’s too much to juggle to also manage whether requirements make sense given the intended user base.

We’re now trying a process where a Product Owner (aka product manager, aka product editor) owns the requirements, and the Project Manager owns getting it done.

This also helps balance the needs of different constituencies — the Project Manager is the voice of the client (and the agency) and the Product Owner is the voice for the user. As we say about building websites, “you aren’t your user.”

It’s too early to report the results, but it seems promising thus far, especially for a services company where each project is different (as opposed to a product company that’s maintaining a product that’s relatively the same for each customer). Andrew, thanks for starting the conversation!
http://twitter.com/jonnyhoar Jonathan Hoar

Good stuff. Just to muddy the waters further – what you’re describing sounds quite like product marketing (in one its many guises)
Andy Khoo

Unfortunately, we see a lot of cases where the product manager also acts as the project manager and owner. Tough times when roles aren’t defined clearly!
http://www.hunterwalk.com/ hunterwalk

did you ever find out the story behind Square supposedly dissolving the product editor role?
http://andrewchenblog.com Andrew Chen

I got an email from square marcomm saying that they are definitely 100% product editor. Glad to hear they are keeping it up.

Sent from iPhone

@andrewchen