A Product is a Product: product management is not just software!
When defining the job of a product manager, at least one of two definitions always pops up. The first one (chronologically speaking) is from Marty Cagan’s indispensable book Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love; Marty describes it as “to discover a product that is valuable, usable and feasible”. The other one is Martin Eriksson’s Venn diagram, supporting his definition of “product management as the intersection between business, technology and user experience”.
None of them is, of course, more correct than the other: they are both seminal, and just look at product management from different angles. However, they do share a seemingly futile common characteristic: none of them refer to “software”, or to “digital product”. Product is product.
Too often, I see Martin’s Venn diagram being misquoted, or adapted, with “Design” in the place of “UX”, and/or “Engineering” in the place of “Technology”.
