[charliebwrites]

Product Management is hosting a party...

...but the venue owner wants the staff to do insane party tricks instead of buy chips and soda

...and wants to take half the guests off the list because they invited too many people

...and wants to change the theme 12 hours before the party starts, because they're _certain_ the party goers will love this new theme (despite never talking to them)

Your job as a PM is to make sure the staff and the party goers never realize any of this is happening in the background. So they can focus on doing their job well.

And to also have a good enough understanding of what the needs of the party goers are to make sure you're throwing the right party

[cm11]

The problem is that the PM—the role (and sometimes the person)—at this party enables this.

1. We can think this sort of agility is good (and the outcomes better because of it). If so, we are at the least saying the PM doesn't know or arbitrate what's good. The half of the PM job that is planning and visioning is being done by the owner and the PM receives it. The PM work here is reshuffling the new, late, non-ideal constraints into something where the team actually can and does implement it. That work is real, but it's best case scenario. PMs can also pass on the "entropy"—taking the problems they've received from the owner and simply relaying them to the team. That's not so additive.

2. We can think of this sort of agility as bad. If the asks are ridiculous—and the PM doesn't push back—then the team has the problems and a buffer between them and anyone who could do anything about it. The changes you mention are ones that could have been known earlier. These aren't sudden environmental changes, these are ones that should have been planned for. That is in some way or form the PM's responsibility to stabilize. Are there bad executives who do whimsical things like this? Yes, they hire PMs (intentionally or not) to make it easier for them to do it.

When PMs are good, they frequently and actively go against the company/leadership. PM as a job description is a leader with no power. PMs as people either find a way to make those untenable things work (which means the current problem is fixed, but the company has a leadership problem) or they don't (which means the current problem becomes the ICs' problems and there is no feedback mechanism to leadership).

[jawns]

It sounds like advice I've given to men serving as the Best Man and women serving as the Maid/Matron of Honor at a wedding. Your job isn't just ceremonial. It is to make sure that if anything unexpected comes up, you solve it in such a way that the newlyweds don't even know it happened.

[thwarted]

Then these roles should be more involved with the wedding planning process. Neither the best man nor the maid of honor have the budget nor the authority to make sure things go smoothly.