Product Management vs. Product Marketing - 2 Departments or 1?
By Michael Shrivathsan on Aug 25, 2009 in Product Management, Product Marketing
Today, at the vast majority of software companies that have 500 or more employees, there are two separate but closely related departments: “Product Management” and “Product Marketing“.
I believe this is a fundamentally flawed setup for today’s fast-changing markets - a setup that leads to confusion over roles, lack of ownership, unnecessary politics & poor morale - and often RUINS innovation.
This belief is based on my experiences at successful companies in Silicon Valley over the past two decades, and discussions with friends/colleagues in the industry who manage Product Management and/or Product Marketing departments.
In this blog post, I describe the reasons for my belief and provide an alternative solution.
How We Got Here
I mentioned above how the vast majority of software companies have two separate departments for Product Management and Product Marketing. Here is how the role is usually split:
Product Management: Inbound role. Focuses on listening to and understanding market needs, translating those needs to product specifications and then working with cross-functional teams to build products that address these needs.
Product Marketing: Outbound role. Focuses on creating messaging to tell the world about the product. They don’t usually tell the world themselves (that is done by Marketing or MarCom departments) - but create key messaging for datasheets, website, flash presentations, trade shows, etc.
(If you’d like more details on how these roles are usually split - see this detailed chart from Pragmatic Marketing, Inc - a consulting company in Scottsdale, AZ)
Okay, having defined that - How did we get here? From my observation, most companies start with just one department - it is called either “Product Management” or “Product Marketing” - but plays both roles defined above. From my own experience, one department can play these roles well enough to build companies that make $100 Million+ in revenues - and achieve market leadership.
Then, something happens. And the company decides to split the roles into two. The most common reasons include:
- Scaling Attempts: As a company grows, companies need more folks to play these roles. In their attempt to scale, they often fall prey to one of the following misconceptions.
- Specialization Theory: This is the theory that says the two roles need very different skills that cannot be possessed by the same human being. It further says - even if some folks were to possess them both, they are a rare and nearly extinct species
- and hence cannot scale. - Flawed Advice: There are a lot of excellent consultants & authors who propose that these teams be split into two. While I have enormous respect for many of these folks (I’ve learned a lot from many of them) - on this specific point, I must respectfully disagree after much thought.
- Politics & Empire-Building: This can be best understood by studying organizational theory and how social groups evolve. Not surprisingly, I’ve seen these factors often play a very non-trivial role in causing the split.
Why This Setup (2 Departments) is Flawed
This splitting into two departments - while it does offer some benefits - suffers from some serious flaws:
- Confusion over Roles: When you split these closely-related roles into two different departments - people who are playing the roles get very confused as to where their role stops and the other person’s role starts.
- Lack of Ownership: When one person plays both roles, the ownership is crystal clear. Not so when the roles are split between two different departments - especially when these departments report into different parts of the company (such as CTO and VP Marketing).
- Unnecessary Politics: When people are put into situations where they’re unclear about their roles and unclear about ownership - blame games and politics are just a whisker away.
- Poor Morale: The above three points invariably lead to poor morale.
- RUINS innovation: Ultimately, this is how the company that takes the misguided step of splitting the roles suffers. Capability to innovate is ruined - and is left to smaller companies that don’t have such unnecessary splits in roles that are so critical to innovation.
How We Can Fix This
Here are some steps we can take to avoid these issues:
- Have one department play both “Product Management” and “Product Marketing” roles. You can call the department either name - the specific choice doesn’t matter much.
- We should stop believing the incorrect notion that one person cannot play both roles. In their popular book Built to Last Collins & Porras say the following: The “Tyranny of the OR” pushes people to believe that things must be either A or B, but not both. I believe the vast majority of our industry suffers from this flawed notion that one person cannot play both roles. Instead, we must embrace what Collins & Porras call “The Genius of the AND”.
- Hire people who possess the skills needed to play both roles. I’ve personally done so many times - I know others who’ve done it too - and do not find it much harder, let alone impossible. All we’re looking for are people who can LISTEN (inbound) and SPEAK (outbound) - not that much harder, unless we have a preconceived notion that it is extremely hard.
- Build systems, processes, tools and training to enable people to play both roles at a very high level. The skills required are very trainable - and most people who can learn the skills to excel in one role can easily learn the skills for the other role too.
On a personal note - many of you know that our company, Accompa, is currently a growing startup. We’re starting by having one department play both roles - and we intend to keep it that way even as we grow much bigger.
I have a lot more to add on this topic - but will stop here to keep this post relatively short, and will add more thoughts in the comments section.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Let us know - click here to post your comment…
Did you know?
1. Michael Shrivathsan | Aug 25, 2009 | Reply
@StewartRogers asked on Twitter:
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don’t you think it is too much for one person? …
—-
My response:
This is a good question, and is often asked in response to my proposal to have one person play both roles.
My thought on this is as follows. I think whether or not it is too much for one person depends on the workload of a particular product.
If it is too much workload, we can split the workload among two or more persons, all of whom will have responsibility for both inbound & outbound roles - for different modules of the product, or different target markets, or some other logical division of labor.
I’ve observed that this setup can avoid the flaws much better than dividing inbound & outbound between two different people.
2. Saeed Khan | Aug 25, 2009 | Reply
Same department? Yes.
Same person? No.
I totally agree that Product Management and Product Marketing should be in the same org. Call it Products or whatever, but having them in separate orgs is a significant drag on efficiency, alignment and execution.
As an organization matures, one needs to differentiate and specialize the roles, not combine them. This reduces focus, scalability and efficiency, not the opposite.
Differentiate roles are something that is significantly lacking in the Product Management space. We need to be promoting stratified and differentiated roles.
Instead of looking for uniquely qualified individuals who are technical and business savvy, and who are great external communicators and writers and well as have the ability to lead internal teams forward, we need to define the proper roles that produce scalable teams and fill them with the right people for each of the differentiated roles.
I think we can agree to disagree on this one Michael, but good post with some thought provoking writing.
3. Saeed Khan | Aug 25, 2009 | Reply
BTW,
I wrote about this on my own blog, based on some informal reader surveys….
http://onproductmanagement.net/2009/02/16/reorg-time/
4. Michael Shrivathsan | Aug 25, 2009 | Reply
Hey Saeed - Great comments. Likewise - while we disagree on the exact approach, I respect your thoughts.
Nice blog post as well, thanks for the link - comments on your posts are great too.
I hope our posts help improve the state of PM/PMM orgs. So many companies use badly structured approaches, such as:
* PM reports into CTO & PMM reports into VP Marketing.
* PM & PMM teams being set up to fight & fail - due to unclear roles, lack of ownership.
* etc…
There is indeed more than 1 way to solve this problem. I like the simplest approach. Bring down these walls completely - and merge the 2 roles, I say!
5. Val Workman | Aug 26, 2009 | Reply
I believe its clear that these functions need to be integrated. The reason we keep disusing this topic is because it’s so hard to integrate the functions. There is a webinar in the PMV http://grandview.rymatech.com/pmv/webinars/2009/08/integrated-prouct-management.php reviewing how this is done by the folks at Oliver Wight.
The question n my mind isn’t should it be integrated, but how?
6. John Bredehoft | Aug 26, 2009 | Reply
I agree with your first point, but not necessarily the second.
I have worked for relatively small organizations, and there have only been two instances in which product management and product marketing reported to two separate managers. However, I can’t draw any valid conclusions from the experience, because there were other issues at play that affected departmental productivity (in the first case, one of the managers quit; in the second, one of the managers was fired after decimating the department in question).
If the amount of work is more than can be done with one person, you’re going to have to segment the job somehow to split it between two people. Either you split the product in two (with the two managers concentrating on different components), or you perform the product management/product marketing split. I can’t conclusively say that splitting the product in two is always the right way.
7. Michael Shrivathsan | Aug 26, 2009 | Reply
Hi Val - Nice to hear you too agree that the functions should be integrated.
In terms of how to integrate - here are my thoughts:
* For small and emerging companies - it’s probably easier. Just don’t split them in the first place!
* For larger companies that already have a split role - it is a much harder question due to the political and organizational challenges involved. I still believe it is doable - perhaps gradually, over time (with executive sponsorship when possible).
8. Michael Shrivathsan | Aug 26, 2009 | Reply
Hi John - Good comments.
In terms of your question regarding how to split workload - here’s my thought:
* Let’s say we have a product with two modules & enough workload to occupy two people full-time.
* Option A: We tell two people that each of them “owns” 1 module (inbound, outbound & overall success of each module).
* Option B: We tell two people that each of them is responsible for half the work on both modules (i.e. one person for inbound, and 1 person for outbound).
* I strongly believe (from what I’ve seen) Option-A will lead to more ownership, clearer roles, less politics and more innovation.
Of course, just like you I can’t conclusively say this either - due to lack of statistically significant body of data (I doubt such data even exists anywhere!). But empirical observation has convinced me that Option-A is the way to go.
9. Steve Johnson | Aug 28, 2009 | Reply
In our annual survey of product managers and product marketing managers at http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/survey we find that more companies are creating “product” or “product management” organizations. The best companies put both product managers and product marketing managers in this group. A shared VP ensure common vision and common priorities.
As for one person or two (or more), you can slice it many ways. There sure is a lot for one person to do. It would help if that one person had only one product (instead of three, the national average, or five or a dozen) And many of the sales support activities could/should be handled by sales operations or sales engineers.
I’ve done both one product with multiple product managers and many products for one product manager; it’s all about skills and time management.
Use the framework to identify your expected time commitment for all the activities. Add it up. Is that one person or two… or five or more? Break the job by person, by product, by market, but make it a reasonable job that doesn’t involved daily heroics and a 100+ hour work week.
10. Michael Shrivathsan | Aug 31, 2009 | Reply
Hi Steve - Excellent points.
* I agree, sales support should be handled by SEs or similar roles. PMs can train them, but in general should not be spending time on providing day-to-day sales support.
* I consider it a much better approach for a PM to do fewer products but focus on both “inbound” and “outbound” activities (as opposed to dividing “inbound” and “outbound” among different people or different departments) - due to crystal clear ownership and other benefits I’ve outlined above. Many companies have the opportunity to improve in this regard.
11. Andrea Moe | Sep 20, 2009 | Reply
I 100% agree that, when possible, product management and product marketing should be one department. Too often I have seen marketers disconnected from their markets and customers - so much so that they can’t speak the speak and be successful.
And thank you for the PM / PMM definitions. I tweaked them a little for my team…
Product Management: Inbound role. Focuses on listening to and understanding market needs, translating those needs to product strategy and high-level customer requirements, and then working with cross-functional teams to build products that address these needs.
Product Marketing: Outbound role. Focuses on creating messaging and positioning to tell the world about the product - creating key messaging for customer and partner facing media: corporate / product website, collateral, social channels etc… They don’t usually tell the world themselves; that is done with Customer Marketing and MARCOM.
Andrea
PS Pragmatic has updated their framework. http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/pragmatic-marketing-framework
12. Michael Shrivathsan | Sep 21, 2009 | Reply
Hi Andrea - You’re welcome, happy to be of help.
Thanks for your comments & updated link as well.
13. Geoffrey Anderson | May 9, 2011 | Reply
Michael,
Great post, and thoughtful comments.
I wholeheartedly agree about the reporting chain, and the worst case is a split with the PM going to eng/CTO/Dev or whatever that department is, and the PMM going to a traditional marketing organization. This often leads to engineers being moved into the PM role, and they often lack the depth to prioritize, and work cross functionally across the organization.
Likewise, a PMM who is primarily a marketeer will often not have enough technical depth to talk the talk.
This is why Product Managers are a special breed, and that even where you segment the roles, there needs to be some cross over (i.e. a PM has some outbound skills, and a PMM has some capability at the inbound requirements definition.)
If this is true, and if their performance is properly set, then I believe separate roles can work. The problem is that if they are in different organizations, the politics often prevent such sanity from pervading the day, and the team suffers.
Glad to have found this posting!