Love that post, although the "CEO of the product" title has never really resonated with me. A large difference between being a PM and an actual CEO is that both CEO lead via influence but the CEO has final authority. Day-to-day that's not a big distinction, but when sh*t really hits the fan it is a BIG difference :)
Sadly less applicable now with the explosion in the number of PMs accompanied by the responsibilities that developers haves ceded away to them.
Early in my career (~20 yr, and obviously ymmv maybe I just had good ones) product folks knew their business, customers, market, and the capabilities of the business as well or better than anyone else in the building. They could pull off the “ceo of the product” role well. Some of them were hard driving, others had more of a mr Rogers vibe and somehow always had on a sweater and a big mug of coffee in hand, but they made sure people around them understood what was to be built, why it was to be built, and had a “player coach” feel. These days every sub-project has a PM and there just isn’t the need for the PM of old anymore.
I see a lot of problems popping up in organizations that have someone trying to be the type of PM that their coworkers don’t expect them to be.
Wait, what aged poorly about it? I don't know if you meant that but the disclaimer at the top says it did:
>>Warning: This document was written 15 years ago and is probably not relevant for today’s product managers. I present it here merely as an example of a useful training document.
Thanks for confirming. I skimmed it and I couldn't tell what he meant was no longer relevant; nothing seemed obsolete (in any obvious way to a non-PM like me). To his credit, it seems like he wrote the principles in a very general, abstract manner that didn't become dated with changing technology.