Have you ever tried asking people what a product manager actually is? You’ll probably get ten different answers if you ask ten different people, regardless of whether they work for the same company.
What a product manager does is more of an art than a science. Companies deploy the role and its responsibilities differently. Yet, the essence remains the same throughout the market:
Product managers discover what drives value and lead teams to deliver it.
Recently, I noticed a new trend. Companies are looking for full-stack product managers and frontend product managers. Initially, it shocked me, but as I dug deeper, it became clear what companies aim to achieve with that.
This post helps to clarify what these terms mean, as well as where each role would make sense, and whether you should adopt the role distinction.
What’s a full-stack product manager?
A full-stack product manager goes from strategy to delivery, from idea to value. To fulfill this role, it’s fundamental to master the following:
- Strategy — Clarity on how to craft a product strategy that simplifies decision-making
- Discovery — Solid toolbox to help teams uncover what drives value and what doesn’t
- Delivery — Ability to go beyond features by focusing on outcomes instead of outputs
The responsibility of a full-stack product manager is broad. One must have solid business acumen and vast product management skills to fulfill this role. Some companies go even further, expecting the full-stack product manager to have extensive technical knowledge, such as infrastructure, security, coding, etc.
What’s a frontend product manager?
A frontend product manager is a specialized role focusing on usability and experience. This role goes in-depth into specialized experiments to gradually increase user value while optimizing for business outcomes.
Unlike the full-stack product manager, the frontend product manager isn’t responsible for product strategy. Instead, the focus is on product discovery, which involves maximizing the use of product experiments.
To thrive as a frontend product manager, one must have a solid experimentation toolbox and a sound understanding of user experience.
Where would a full-stack product manager or frontend product manager make sense?
Before thinking about the role definition, reflect on the responsibilities. Let’s look at three distinct scenarios:
Startup / pre-market-fit
The responsibilities of a product person in a startup pre-market-fit would require:
- Critical thinking to craft and adapt strategies
- Customer needs understanding
- Business acumen
- Experimentation mastery
- Ability to lead teams to accelerate delivery
Given the above, a full-stack product manager role would be better, as it entails a clear end-to-end responsibility. A frontend product manager would struggle in this scenario, as going in-depth would be too early.
Startup / growth phase
Once the startup has validated its business model and found a product market fit, it’s time to scale the reach and acquire new users. For this challenge, the product manager needs:
- Discovery mindset
- Ability to craft and run multiple experiments a week
- Make data-driven decisions
- Uncover insights from experiments
- Continuously increase value for customers and business
Regarding the move, you can expect a more specific responsibility. While the pre-market fit will probably go from end to end, the growth phase will focus on in-depth experience. A frontend product manager fits this situation well, while a full-stack product manager may feel bored given the spectrum of responsibilities.
Established company / maturity
Once the company has exhausted its growth potential, it’s time to leverage loyalty. This game is often played differently; some companies will opt to introduce new products and create an ecosystem (think Apple here). Other companies like Google will upsell and cross with its workspace. It’s also possible to develop new business models, like YouTube, by having a subscription to remove ads.
As you can see, creativity takes over once the product reaches maturity to ensure the company remains competitive. Then you may wonder, which would be the best product manager for this case? Let’s look at the responsibilities:
- Experiment with new business models
- Understand how to leverage loyalty
- Strategize how to carve more value from current customer base
It’s similar to a pre-market fit, as you’re introducing something new to the product, but at this point, you already have customers who trust your brand. The skills of a full-stack product manager would be highly relevant in this scenario.
Should you adopt the role distinction?
Context matters, and it matters a lot.
I’m skeptical about new roles, as companies tend to misunderstand them. The product manager should be the only one because the ultimate responsibility remains the same: driving value for customers and the business.
However, companies may deploy the product manager role differently according to their situation, which is fine. In one place, a product manager may focus on the big picture, while in another place may go in-depth in a micro experience. Either way, they aim for the same: maximize value.
The main reason I’m skeptical is that teams with multiple roles can easily become bloated.
Key takeaways
Companies don’t agree on the definition of a product manager. However, the essence remains to drive value for customers and the business.
Full-stack product management implies end-to-end responsibility from crafting a strategy from zero to collecting value. Frontend product management is a specialized role. It focuses on user experience and in-depth optimizations.
Understanding your situation’s responsibilities is more important than forcing a new role name. I recommend using only the product manager to describe what your scenario requires to be successful. Be careful when adding more roles than necessary to your team. Great product teams have one product manager – one bus, one driver.
Featured image source: IconScout
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