“The product manager is accountable for ensuring the solution is both valuable and viable,” says Marty Cagan of SVPG in this sample PM job description. Valuable for the customer and viable for the business. This translates to the PM working on a variety of tasks through the week, and often through the day.

Melissa Perri, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, tweeted this picture some years ago. This allocation of work by seniority level is still directionally relevant. 

Types of product work

Strategic work is to create the product vision and strategy for the product/ area/ business. Notice that every level has strategic work.

Operational work is to create the roadmap and connect strategy to tactical milestones and success criteria.

Tactical work is to release successful products that drive outcomes for the customer and the business. 

Job levels

More senior levels need to handle more VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity), as a result of scope and maturity of the product, team, or business that they are responsible for.

In Radford’s analogy, an Associate PM is “learning about ropes”, a PM can “tie basic knots and participate as others tie complex knots”, a Senior PM “understands rope-making”, and a Principal PM “knows more about knots than anyone else”.

Shishir Mehrotra’s PSHE talks about scope of work. P is where you identify the Problems worth solving. S is where you identify the Solutions to the problem you are given. H is where you plan How to deliver the solution. E is where you execute the plan well.

70-20-10 thumb rule

One way for an individual contributor PM to think about this is the 70/20/10 thumb rule that Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, wrote in “How Google Works”. 70% of time on core, 20% on adjacent, and 10% on new/exploratory. This can also be thought of as the allocation of work to the now-next-later roadmap. It’s more productive – and practical – to aim for this allocation over 1-2 weeks than longer or shorter durations. 

Product jobs are demanding and rewarding. Enjoy. 

PS: Check out more articles on building products. I write to pay it forward and to clarify my thinking.