By Len Lipkin

In this rough economy, product managers are in particular jeopardy. Because they link to company revenue is less direct than sales or services staff, a PM has to look out for themselves and make sure that they are providing value, and perhaps more importantly, make sure that that value is understood by your senior managers. I know this firsthand because my position was eliminated last month.

My value to our team was product management process in a group that didn’t value formal product management process. No judgment of them or me. The fact that we were acquired by Oracle and the economy went into the tank about 6 months into my tenure certainly altered their long range plans for product strategy and my role in those plans.

In that job, I was an external hire. Since I didn’t know the players or product as well up front, I did limit myself to process improvement and requirements writing for very specific areas that I tried to learn as much about as possible. Possibly I was not assertive enough, but my plan was to learn in the background, write requirements as asked, and grow slowly into the role. No room for slowly in today’s economy, that’s for sure. Ironically, not one of the many requirements documents that I wrote ever made it to a business analyst, let alone a developer–that’s the slow reality of product management for an enterprise system. Kind of a catch-22, I know.

In retrospect, I certainly should have actively pursued more responsibilities. How? At the risk of sounding immodest, in my prior product management experience, I was a highly valued asset. What was the difference? There, I took responsibility not just for the product, but for the whole line of business to a certain extent. There were clear metrics that I was judged against, not just MRD generation. I did what it took to meet and exceed those metrics, often going beyond the typical scope of Product Management into areas like Project Management, Program Management, Services Development, and Training. I lead early adopter programs, recruited references, and trained services staff. Why? Because my metrics were existing customer adoption of upgrades, new customer sales, customer satisfaction survey results, among others. If I had tethered myself to MRD generation, which was the core of my job description, I would’ve been let go in one of the dozen or so rounds of layoffs that that company went through while I was there. MRDs reap long range benefits. The requirements that you write today aren’t reflected in the metrics for months, even years to come. Carpe Diem!