Product Management Career Ladder: Getting Promoted to Director

RichMironovMarch25,2017

• Product Manager role is different from Director, VP• Not everyone product manager wants to be (or

should be) a Director• Can you demonstrate interest/skills/scope

ahead of Director role?

Product Roles

Mythical Product Organization

DirPM DirPM PricingAnalyst

SrPM

PM/PO

SrPM

CompetitiveAnalyst

SrPM

PM

PM/PMM

ProductOwner

Channel/PartnerPM

VPProducts

• Champions individual products• Knows more about product, market, roadmap, competition, use cases,

personas, trade-offs than anyone else• Talks benefits with customers; talks tech and benefits with engineers;

talks strategy with execs• Relentless communicator of the truth

• Ships great (individual) products• Timeline: Next 2-4 quarters

Product Manager (Individual Contributor)

market information, priorities,requirements, roadmaps, epics,

user stories, backlogs, personas, MRDs…

product bits

strategy, forecasts, commitments, roadmaps, competitive intelligence

budgets, staff,targets

Field input,Market feedback

Segmentation, messages, benefits/features, pricing,

qualification, demos…

Markets & CustomersDevelopment

Marketing& Sales

Executives

ProductManagement

What Does A Product Manager Do?

W W W . M I R O N O V . C O M

• Focus on processes, resources and teams• Cross-functional cooperation and priorities• Role/tools standardization and simplification • PLM-level trends and market input• Mentor your replacement

• Keep the trains running• Scope

• Next 6 quarters• Broad product strategy and budget

Director of Product Management

• Focus on aligning strategy, organization and products• Is the company succeeding? Is Product succeeding?• Company-wide issues and disconnects• Market success (= revenue!)

• Build cross-functional organizations that do the right things

• Scope• 3 year trends• Unbiased member of executive team

VP Products / CPO

How to demonstrate director-level

interest/skills/scope?

• Be appreciative• Never go behind your current manager’s back• Never talk trash about your current manager• Avoid accidental ultimatums• Understand situation and incentives

The Conversation…

• Organizational levels have different roles

• Decide what you want

• Demonstrate skills one level up

TAKE-AWAYS

10W W W . M I R O N O V . C O M

CONTACTRich Mironov, CEOMironov Consulting233 Franklin St, Suite #308San Francisco, CA 94102

RichMironov

@RichMironov

Rich@Mironov.com