Who Am I?

Product Management

Sep 8

I made the transition to product management via a PhD-track program in History. In 2012, I decided to take a year off school between my Masters’ and the start of my PhD program. A happenstance encounter with a gregarious account executive at a startup in Ann Arbor, MI got me into software development for what I thought would be a brief interlude in my studies. That year became my career.

I often think about my degrees in History and my career in product management. The itch that History scratched - using evidence to explain phenomena, understanding what forces act on people, and searching for a kernel of truth in a lived experience - have parallels in product work.

Historians use primary and secondary evidence to inform their work. Secondary source evidence helps them understand the existing canon of literature on a subject. They examine the methods and sources used in these works as well. This pursuit identifies gaps in the study of history, the historiography, where a historian may contribute something new. For example, the emergence of new methods, like social history, enabled the reading for voices that historians had ignored. Social history is deliberate about amplifying the voices of women, indigenous people, black, and brown folx. Formerly unheard, these contributions provide a fuller understanding of the historical experience. They revealed a kernel of truth in the experiences of humanity.

Primary sources enable a historian to understand the concrete conditions in which people, phenomena, or institutions existed. For example, diary entries, newspapers, and correspondence illuminate the conditions experienced by characters living in the past. The primary source material can either refute or validate the assumptions a historian had about their desired contribution. It is the building block of any meaningful contribution - the kernel of truth in the situation.

Finally, pulling together all the secondary and primary source materials requires balancing the big picture with the finite details. It forces historians to determine which information is most compelling in order to make a contribution. It makes them organize themselves so the argument made is coherent. Ultimately, it culminates in an article or a book that has, in some way, added to the historiography.

The flow of a historian has always felt similar to that of a product manager - processing evidence to understand a behavior, seeing a kernel of truth in a lived experience, and producing a product that contributes something to a group of people. As product managers our secondary sources are stakeholders, competitors, and industry best practices. These things define where we can contribute a product to the market. Technologies, like historical methods, may change, allowing us to build something exceptional. The primary sources, our end-users or subject matter experts, are where we find the concrete conditions that our product addresses - some desire, pain, or goal - a contextually bound truth about their lives’ that we can affect. As with History this primary evidence may refute or validate where we believed we could contribute. Finally, the synthesis of business, competition, industry, and users demand the same things as a historian. Balancing the big picture with the details, sifting through evidence to find something compelling, organizing work in a coherent manner, and producing a digital output - all are present in the work of product management.

It is in the process of distillation of evidence to find some truth, contextually bound, about the human condition and developing a product to address that truth that drives me.