[munksbeer]

Frankly, for me, the best value product managers can provide is being the buffer and/or unblocker. I want other team C to do task X, because it unblocks my team and others, but somehow I can't convince team C to do it. Well, that becomes the product managers job. They _should_ know the path to delivery and understand why this is important and negotiate with team C to drop other stuff to deliver X. And they can tell anyone above team C why this is happening. And I have worked with some product managers like that, but unfortunately they are rare, and most just get bullied by stronger willed (obstinate) tech teams. It isn't an easy job.

I'm quite fortunate that at the moment I have a great relationship with all of our peer teams and we generally sort it out amongst ourselves. We don't have a product manager involved at all for the last few years.