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« Sydney Morning Herald Compares Jackson And Jordan | Main | The Onion Takes The Piss Out Of Bloggers » November 19, 2007You're A ... Program Manager?On Saturday, I participated in a panel at the UW Business School with two other alums, talking to prospective MBAs about b-school in general, the UW in particular, career options and experiences for MBAs, and so on. (Fun fact: this group will be the MBA class of 2010, which makes me feel fantastically old. Yikes.) When we got to the part where I talked about what I do for a living, I saw a few furrowed brows - people 'get' that I work for Microsoft (and work on the Mac), but they didn't really understand a) what the heck a "Program Manager" is, b) what that job is all about, and c) what the heck an MBA is doing in the role. In fairness, Program Management isn't a typical career track for MBA types. And, as it happens, I've been having this conversation - or flavors of it - with friends of late, many of whom want to know just what the heck it is that I do in my job, and how it differs from Product Planning. Hence, this post. When I started in Planning as an MBA intern, I typed up a quickie essay ("You're A Product ... Planner?") to explain what I was doing with my summer: Put succinctly, planners help guide product evolution. ... We generate new ideas, identify trends, keep an eye on competitive products, and try to help provide thought leadership on products. We are, in effect, the "voice" of the customer. As a Planner, it was my job to help the product team figure out what they should be building. In day-to-day terms, this meant tons of travel and customer research - in-person visits, focus groups, customer councils, surveys, you name it. Planners spend a lot of time in the field, trying to getting a sense of what's going on in the market. Planners work with people in the product team (e.g., Program Managers, Developers, Testers, Designers), as well as the marketing department (e.g. Product Managers) and executive groups to help get the people who build the product aligned around what the customer wants to buy. Planning is a job with lots of strategy, market-segmentation, analysis and number-crunching. In other words, it's a classic MBA gig. For me, moving into Program Management meant taking a step forward; rather than working with the product team to define requirements, I work on the product team, designing features, writing specifications, and trying to build a product that customers will love. At a high level, Program Managers do two big things: they write specifications that govern how the product will look, work and behave, and they manage the schedule to ensure that all the various parts of the team are working in a coherent, consistent, rational way. Probably the best definition I've ever seen of what a Program Manager is/does comes from Jim McCarthy, author of (the excellent) "Dynamics of Software Development": Program Managers are the team members who perform the following functions: So, yes, Virginia, Program Management isn't a typical MBA job. In fact, a lot of my PM peers around the company tend to be fairly technical folks with CS degrees. Truthfully, as a lifelong geek, the technology side is really interesting; one of the best things about working at Microsoft is that you get to work with a lot of advanced stuff (and, being a Mac developer, I get to work with a lot of advanced Apple stuff). But at the same time, tech doesn't exist in a vacuum; customers don't buy technologies, they buy products, and if you want someone to buy your product, you better be doing something with that product that they find interesting or valuable. And you know something? An MBA can be an awfully useful thing for figuring out what those "interesting" or "valuable" things might be. Which, I daresay, is a Good Thing. I like to think that my geekiness made me a better Planner, and I'd like to think that my MBA will make me a better Program Manager. Does that help? Posted by Gavin Shearer at November 19, 2007 12:01 PM. Posted to MSFT | UW MBA. CommentsWait...what exactly is this Em Bee Aye of which you speak? Posted by: Allie Microsoft's preferred naming convention for the role also tends to confuse people. In the Bay Area, the role is more typically called "Product Manager", and the role that MS calls Product Manager is more accurately described as "Product Marketing." I've worked at MS and in the Bay Area, so I get this question a lot. Product Management, as it should be called, is actually a very MBA-ish job. It's not just designing new features to tell engineers what to do, but it also requires understanding your competitive landscape, working with marketing for both product input and helping them with messaging, and Product Planners too (but only if your company is lucky enough to have them, ie, you work at MS) to develop the best functionality available. Understanding how the machine of business works and who all the players are that are needed to make products successful are just some of the perspectives that MBAs can bring to help other non-MBA colleagues in Product Management. Just go to Yahoo's website and look for open PM roles. You'll see they often say, "MBA preferred." Note that it's not required! But it does help. And gosh darn, it's a FUN job. :) I highly recommend it to MBAs and non-MBAs alike. Posted by: E.Chen Post a commentThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. 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