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“Congratulations, team.” Goes on to mention specific people who played a role, but not himself, even though he played a major one too. That’s typically our stakeholder when there’s a win.
“Oga Drive Development” is a thing I only read about. With my own Oga, it’s been “debate,” always, especially when it involves feature suggestions. We don’t build or prioritize a feature just because Oga feels and says we should. The team needs a tool to improve work? I just have to say what, why, and what it costs. I don’t always get my way, but there’s honesty, and that’s what I appreciate. Caveat: It’s not easy though. You need data, whys, and the grace of God to win the debate. LOL.
But who appreciates the stakeholder? Investors? Partners? His wife?
Or maybe he should switch the congratulatory messages to:
“Congratulations to us. Special mentions to this person, that person, and me for doing XYZ.”
Then again, perhaps he’s just doing his job as the face of the startup.
This question has been on my mind lately.
You’re not a mini CEO as a product manager. It’s not your job to manage the company and people, not even the product team. The teams within the product team have their own leaders. The dev or engineering team is led by the CTO or Tech Lead. The design team by the Design Lead. But in our context, I double as the Venture Lead and Product Manager. Startups and products are my babies, literally. So, depending on the context, I’m either a father, a mother, or both.
For this product, I had to find and recruit the devs and set up the project in the venture studio. That means I had my Venture Lead hat on the whole time and unconsciously kept it on, even when it came time for product development. I started managing the team, being Dev Lead, Design Lead, and PM, until I realized I couldn’t handle the devs anymore. Frustrated, I reached out to the CTO:
Me: You seriously need to start managing the dev team as their Lead.
Him: Yes, you’re the product manager so I thought you were doing that all this while. I’m making sure the AI and data aspect is intact. But I’ll take over and ensure everything works.
Then I realized I had stolen his job. It was time to take off the Venture Lead hat. Once I came to that realization, we trashed it out, and I let him take over. The results? We saw a reflection of his energy on the team and an improvement in their delivery and the way they work.
Lesson learned. I know what I’ll do differently next time. Sprint 5 was supposed to be dedicated to our stakeholder, but I trust my devs to always find a way to steal the spotlight, just like I stole my CTO’s job.
Wait…an email just came in. Our frontend dev is resigning. I gotta go. See you in Sprint 6.
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