Re: Product management and the technical communicator

["Michael West" <mbwest -at- bigpond -dot- com>]

Bruce Byfield wrote:

> Product managers (at least as I've filled the role) is like a
> technical writer in one important respect: they mediate between the
> technical and non-technical parts of a company. Product managers need
> to understand development's viewpoint, but they also need to
> understand marketing's and sale's viewpoint, and be able to explain
> the two to each other. Then they have to combine the two into a
> coherrent strategy, and carry that strategy out.
>
> The reason that product managers often get drawn into sales is that
> many sales depend on having someone who understands the technical
> aspects of a product. Depending on the company, people in sales may
> just not have that expertise. Often, the only ones who do are the
> product managers.

And paradoxically, the PM is often slagged righteously by developers
for being insufficiently "technical". Ideally, the PM and the TW are
allies, in that they are both supposed to be looking at the product
from two directions -- inside and outside. The developers can
exist happily without ever giving much of a thought to how the
product looks in the marketplace.
-- 
Michael West