The Product Manager (PM) role has gained prominence in recent years as companies have embraced Agile methodologies to drive innovation and keep up with rising customer expectations. The accelerating pace of technological advancements has made Product Management more complex while simultaneously increasing its importance in delivering successful products.
But is Product Management truly dying? Or is it evolving in ways that many organizations struggle to support?
Before diving into the challenges facing the role, let’s examine why Product Management is so critical.
The Product Manager Role
The responsibilities of a Product Manager vary across organizations, but at its core, Product Management is about strategically guiding a product’s development, launch, and growth.
PMs work at the intersection of business, techology, and UX/design, continuously addressing key questions:
- Do our customers want this feature or product?
- Can we build this feature or product effectively?
- Should we build this feature or product given our business objectives?
A well-functioning Product Management team ensures that innovation aligns with business strategy and user needs, driving long-term success. However, several systemic issues are eroding the effectiveness of the role.
Six Major Challenges Undermining Product Management
Despite its strategic importance, Product Management often faces significant hurdles that prevent PMs from operating at their full potential. Here are six key problems I’ve seen that threaten the role’s effectiveness and how they can be addressed.
Problem #1: Undefined or Poorly Defined Roles
Many organizations, especially those new to Agile, lack a clear understanding of what Product Managers do. This often leads to PMs being utilized as Project Managers (PJMs) who simply manage timelines, rather than strategic leaders shaping product direction.
Without a well-defined role, PMs can lose ownership over key decisions, leading to fragmented strategies and misaligned teams.
Solution: Companies must establish clear expectations for PMs, differentiating them from Project Managers and Business Analysts. Leadership should ensure PMs have the authority to drive product decisions while fostering collaboration across teams.
Problem #2: Forcing PMs to Wear Too Many Hats
The other common issue facing PMs is that many organizations — especially large organizations who are dealing with resource constraints — often stretch the PMs thin by forcing them to handle the Scrum Master and/or Product Owner roles.
PMs might be able to handle extra roles for a few sprints while hiring for these other roles, but forcing them to wear multiple hats for the long term can have devastating consequences.
PMs who wear multiple hats quickly get burned out, and this often impacts the product teams who will suffer from not having a leader focused on solving complex problems for their customers and business.
Solution: Organizations should ensure PMs are able to 100% focus on their role of leading teams and building successful products. Minimizing other distractions to their role is imperative to maximize the value that PMs deliver.
Problem #3: Responsibility Without Authority
PMs are often given extensive responsibility for a product’s success but lack the authority to make critical decisions. This problem becomes more pronounced in matrixed organizations, where cross-functional teams report to different leaders.
For example, I’ve seen executives suddenly mandate a shift in priorities based on anecdotal feedback or gut instinct, or even diving into the weeds to “help manage” a team through a marketing beat or high profile launch.
I’ve also seen leadership add new resources to a product team “to speed things up,” where PMs may struggle to integrate them effectively, especially if they lack Agile experience or knowledge of the product and/or users.
All of these types of leadership mismanagement can disrupt workflows and actually derail progress. Even worse, when leaders micromanage their teams, it not only leads to low morale and increase churn, but also results in PMs losing their confidence and relying on leadership input for direction.
Solution: Organizations should empower PMs with greater decision-making authority within product teams. Leadership must trust PMs to guide the team and ensure alignment rather than undermining their role with ad-hoc changes and micromanagement.
Leaders should focus the bulk of their time getting out ahead of their product teams by focusing on future business and product strategies that are at least a quarter (3 months) away.
Problem #4: Executives Don’t Embrace Agile Principles
Even after an Agile transformation, I’ve seen many executives continue to operate with traditional management mindsets. They may still lead without a product strategy, enforce rigid project plans, dictate product prioritization without user research, or disrupt sprints with last-minute changes.
This often leads the PMs and teams to implement a form of “fake” Agile.
Executives might adopt Agile methodologies as a mere checkbox exercise without truly embracing the cultural shift that comes with it. The result is a superficial adherence to Agile practices, devoid of the collaborative and adaptive spirit that defines Agile development.
This can cause a lot of frustration among PMs and team members and a failure to reap the incredible benefits of true agility.
Solution: The most detrimental aspect of fake Agile development lies in the misalignment of values, where PMs and Agile coaches should proactively bridge this gap by:
- Providing executives with leadership focused Agile education that aligns with business objectives to help them embrace the notion that product teams are self-organizing and can make good decisions when given autonomy and trust
- Encouraging regular engagement with product teams and customer feedback
- Demonstrating how iterative development leads to better outcomes through data-driven insights
Problem #5: Overemphasis on Technical Skills at the Expense of Business and Creativity
A common misconception is that Product Managers must be highly technical. While technical expertise can be valuable in certain industries, an overemphasis on technical skills can sideline creativity, business acumen, and user research, all of which are critical for building great products.
However, this does not mean that PMs should be entirely non-technical. In some companies and industries, technical PMs are essential for success, particularly when dealing with complex engineering challenges.
Solution: Organizations should tailor PM skill requirements based on the needs of their specific products. Instead of forcing all PMs into a one-size-fits-all mold, companies should recognize that:
- Some products require deep technical expertise (e.g. AI, cloud infrastructure, etc.)
- Others benefit from strong UX, creativity, or market expertise (e.g. consumer apps, media platforms, etc.)
- A balanced skill set — including user research, strategy, and business insights — is key to long-term product success
Problem #6: Other Departments Hijacking Product Decisions
A strong PM should guide the product roadmap based on customer needs, business objectives, and market insights. However, in some organizations, other stakeholders and/or teams (e.g. sales, marketing, etc.) take control of key product decisions, often without the same level of user research or strategic insight.
This can result in misaligned priorities, where short-term sales goals override long-term product vision, or engineering constraints dictate roadmap decisions instead of user needs.
Solution: Companies must reinforce the PM’s role as the strategic leader of the product by:
- Encouraging cross-functional collaboration without undermining PM ownership
- Ensuring that major product decisions are made with input from customer data, usability testing, and business strategy
- Providing PMs with the authority to push back when decisions conflict with customer needs
Is Product Management Dead?
I’m afraid the truth is… Product Management already died in most large companies a long time ago. #RIP
The cause of death is leadership’s failure to recognize and fix many of the problems I listed above. And sadly many don’t even realize they have a problem.
Because over time they’ve built a large cult following to their products (and services) where customers keep coming back, regardless of how bad the products are.
Now I’ll share the good news! I’ve seen a lot of startups embrace good Product Management, along with Agile and Lean methodologies. These startups are the lifeblood of product development, representing an oversized portion of innovation in the technology sector.
Conclusion
For Product leaders at big companies: It’s time to rethink how you build products, because sidelining the PM function isn’t just eroding talent, it’s strangling innovation and dooming your products to mediocrity.
In order for Product Management to rise from the ashes at large organizations, product leaders must:
- Clearly define the role and differentiate it from project or program management
- Ensure that PMs can focus on their role and not distracted by wearing too many hats
- Give PMs the authority they need to lead effectively
- Align executives with Agile principles and iterative development
- Balance technical, creative, and business skills based on product needs
- Ensure PMs lead product strategy rather than being sidelined by other teams
Once these challenges are addressed, Product Management will once agin be a driving force behind innovation and business success.
I always recommend the 20 Product Model First Principles to leaders for guidance in developing and evolving the PM role. The companies that get this right won’t just survive — they’ll outpace the competition with better products and stronger customer relationships.
For PMs navigating these challenges, the key takeaway is this: advocate for clarity in your role, educate stakeholders on the value of strategic product management, and leverage data to influence decisions.
I personally believe the future of Product Management lies entirely in startups. They’re already rewriting the rules, fueling fearless PMs with the autonomy to build empires from endless AI ideas.
The product revolution isn’t coming — it’s already here. Is your organization empowering PMs to lead the charge or are you digging their grave?
I have to disagree on your point about product managers not needing to be technical.
We’re talking software products – which often or always means APIs and curating a developer community. A successful software product manager must also be a capable developer.
If you haven’t programmed and can’t handle product architecture you’re not going to be allowed to own the product team or own the product decisions.
I’d argue most product managers aren’t technical enough which causes most of the problems you’re mentioning n your article.
I always work my credibility with the tech leaders first and once I have their support I use that as leverage to keep the business leaders in line.
The problem I see with the industry is the conflating of an agile product owner who doesn’t need to be technical with a real software product manager. These are totally different roles!
Good post. Good rationale. Wrong conclusion. First product management has been around alot longer than Agile. I was one, aloing with MANY others, in the 1980s and 1990s. It was actually started/created by Neil McElroy in the 1931 at Proctor and Gambe ( 51331.org). Second, its alwaysw been poorly defined. Why? Organization behvior nad power issues. In small oiganizations, you have the founder/owner who wont give up contro and defintion of their product/baby. So the PM is bascially neutered. In larger organizations, particuyaly B2B, the power struggle between Sales and Engineering, and PM sitting in the middle, creates difficulty in role defintion. Unless the Exec gives the PM org power/air cover, it will be a ‘hey boy’ for engineering or a glorified demo dog for sales. These problems have existed for 40 years. Yet PM is in its most valued postion ever. For the first time we have VP of Product and Chief Product Officers. That is relatively new and means there is a seat at the table unlike the past. These again arent PM issues; they are organizaitonal power issues. And If a company wants to scale with multiople products, it cant unless someone. whether labeled PM or not, does the role. Period. So its short sighted to thunk PM is dead. Its functions are alive like it or not. And smart companie allow it to have the powerr it needs for the good of their business.
Thanks for the insightful comment Greg.
First, I should have added the caveat that I was only referring to digital Product Managers vs brand/marketing Product Managers. And while I do agree that there’s a lot more VP of Product and Chief Product Officers now than ever before, many of those folks are actually hold-overs from the bygone Waterfall era and are contributing to the decline of the PM role by participating in some/all of the issues I listed above.
Lastly, yes products are continuing to get built, but I would argue that there’s only a small fraction (perhaps 2-3%) of the 2 billion websites, 3 million mobile apps, and thousands of wearable digital products that are built well and have achieved any real success. Beyond that, the proof is in the pudding of the stats I listed above… 98% of the digital products that are built now are garbage mainly due to the reasons I listed above. If companies don’t change their ways quickly, then I would predict that Product Management will cease to exist within most companies and they’ll simply outsource the PM function and focus on the business itself.