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It’s one of my favorite questions and comes with a few variations: What is a product manager? What does a product manager do? What makes a great product manager?

I don’t know that I am ready to boil out the definitive magna carta post yet, but I figured I’d start by just highlighting a couple of really good posts I’ve seen on product management. So here goes.

1. Post: How to Hire a Product Manager
Who: Ken Norton (Google, Jotspot, formerly Yahoo!)
Favorite quote:

“Product management may be the one job that the organization would get along fine without (at least for a good while). Without engineers, nothing would get built. Without sales people, nothing is sold. Without designers, the product looks like crap. But in a world without PMs, everyone simply fills in the gap and goes on with their lives. It’s important to remember that – as a PM, you’re expendable. Now, in the long run great product management usually makes the difference between winning and losing, but you have to prove it.”

Sum: Make sure you are making a difference versus filling space. Bring food to meetings occasionally.

2. Post: Strategic AND Tactical
Who: Scott Gatz, (former Yahoo!)
Favorite quote:

“Winning companies have always recognized that you need this combination. When I notice that a company doesn’t get it – that values tactical execution over strategy OR values those people who talk strategy but want others to “do the dirty work” – then I see a company in trouble. You need both.”

Sum: Try to play with range vs. “here’s what I do in this little box over here.” Understand things from end to end.

3. Adventures in product development: Product leads and setting the sequence
Who: Susan Mernit (Yahoo!)
Favorite quote:

“The reason I put ’setting the sequence” into the title for this post is because there’s an inseperable link between crafting a product vision to serve a business goal and then deciding how much of it to execute to get the greatest return and customer value for the littlest cost in the shortest time (Are there really projects that don’t have those requirements? Introduce me, please.)”

Sum: Choose wisely what to focus on when. Sounds obvious. But it’s harder than it looks.

4. Post: So, what do product managers do?
Who: Hunter Walk (Youtube, Google)

“Be willing to stand up for what you believe, especially when you’re representing your users. Hard decisions make great products. Your job is not to carve the safe route. Your job is to increase the probability that you’ll be delighting millions of users in a sustainable fashion.”

Sum: If it were easy, everybody would be doing it. Closely related collorary: There is no crying in baseball.

5. Punk Product Management for the Web
Who: David Beach (Yahoo! then Wink, then Brickhouse)
Favorite quote:

“Use your product, share your product, be a member of your own community, help people, guide people, bring people together, eat your own horse meat…”

Sum: Care. Seriously.