The Role of a Product Manager in Scrum

Understanding Customer Needs

As a product manager, your primary role is to bridge the gap between customer needs and product development. This involves:

• Interacting with Stakeholders: Engage with customers, sales engineers, and system engineers to gain a deep understanding of the customer's real requests and the potential revenue impact for the company.

• Converting Requests: Transform customer requests into product requests through extensive upfront research. Develop knowledge in advance to accurately interpret and convert these requests.

Continuous Learning and Industry Knowledge

The product manager's role requires continuous learning and staying updated with industry trends. This ensures you can:

• Understand New Areas: Constantly learn about new areas in the product and industry to keep up with evolving customer needs.

• Convert Requests Efficiently: Accurately convert customer requests into actionable product requirements.

Creating a Product Backlog

Once you have converted customer requests into product requests, the next step is creating a product backlog:

• Developer Mindset: Understand the developer's perspective. If there is no dedicated product owner, the product manager should act as the product owner.

• Detailed Documentation: Write detailed product backlog items from a developer's mindset, focusing on how features can be implemented within the existing product framework.

• Communication: Remember, developers may not fully grasp or care about the customer's raw request. They are focused on implementation. However, some developers may think outside the box, which can be beneficial.

Providing Insight and Ensuring Quality

As a product manager, you must ensure that introducing new features does not negatively impact existing ones. This involves:

• Insight and Guidance: Provide developers with insights to help them understand the broader context of their work.

• Maintaining Performance: Ensure that new features do not impact the performance or integrity of the product.

By fulfilling these roles effectively, a product manager ensures the successful transformation of customer needs into valuable product features, driving both customer satisfaction and business success.