Best of the month: Product Management and Communication

August 2019

While writing my articles I do a lot of research. And there are so many great articles across the internet that no one sees or recognizes. Because of this, we from Bluespace have decided to start a new series.

Every second week we’ll publish a curated list of new, upcoming, popular and high quality articles from around the web.

This week I want to focus on the relationship between Product Managers and other team members. Like I’ve described in one of our former articles: as a Product Manager you are somewhere in between UX, Tech and Business.

Source: Martin Eriksson

Malte from airfocus focuses especially on the Relationship between Product Managers and UX Designers. The article not only describes the importance of the cooperation of PMs and UXDs but also provides ideas and techniques to improve the relationship between them.

An important strategy to build great relationships with your team is showing them empathy. As Malte describes: “Empathy is at the core of product development.”.

If you have a look into both jobs, the one as a UX Designer and the one as a Product Manager, you can recognize that they are changing and merge with each other.

Other Product Managers like Melissa Perri and Pia Klancar describe that their job as a Product Manager is not just limited to the Product Management, but also includes UX Design.

Pia Klancar has been a UX Designer for almost 10 years. She describes this phenomenon from the UX perspective.

“If you’d put Product management on the left side of the axis and Visual design on the right side, UX used to be somewhere in the middle.” Pia Klancar

Melissa Perri has worked in both jobs, Product Management and UX Design. Her article describes the importance of both parts working together. Moreover, she describes how important it is to know the basics of the other job and to understand what the other is doing.

As a Product Manager, you do not just communicate and work with UX Designers. There are several more members in your team who have different tasks and jobs.

One example of this are developers. The problem is that only 5% of Product Managers know how to code.

“Most of them are easy to work with, but occasionally they disagree with you — and then it will be hard to get to where you want.” Jonas Kurzweg

Sometimes it is hard to give your team an exact answer right now. Sometimes you have to recline a suggestion or a request or you have to postpone it to later.

Just saying “No” is not the best strategy. Jason Evanish’s “Not yet” is a much better alternative.

Besides UX Design and communication there is a lot more to think about as a Product Manager. Malte describes in his article 8 useful tips to create a successful communication and a good and productive atmosphere in your team.

One of the most important tasks of a Product Manager is communication and mediation between different team parties. It’s not always easy, especially when the Product Manager has no experience in the other areas. But by learning skills and using some communication tricks, it is possible to create a productive working atmosphere anyways.

Have you seen or written an article we could include in our next curated list? Feel free to share it in the comments! We’ll review it and possibly add it to the next list.