I agree that there’s some correlation, but I haven’t reached the “causality” conclusion. I could also be a contrarian and argue that companies that never staffed product management are now staffing it. Maybe that’s an interesting aspect to study in one of the annual surveys (like Pragmatic’s).

Thanks again,

Thinking is a skill that can be found anywhere. Current certifications other than thee PDMA NPD can be obtained quickly. Consider that the real meaning of having passed these certification tests. What it really means is that you can sit in a class for a day or two and pass a test. Passing a test is thin. But, this is typical of postmodernist education: pay for a class, pay attention, pass a test. Why would a company pay for that?

I will admit that the MBA glut is a contributor to the commoditization of all management jobs. Tom Peters pointed to the downward pressure on white-collar jobs long ago.

From my point of view, there are a couple of issues to contend with. One relates to ‘who’s got the right body of knowledge?’ and the second is ‘what really matters in business?’

On the first point, some organizations that offer certification have paying participants take tests to validate that they’ve learned in a training class, and/or by reading some books. These represent each organization’s perspective and self-serving belief about a body of knowledge that had not been codified. How could we have three or more organizations – a for-profit company and two not-for profit organizations have their own spin on Product Management? The only outcome I can think of is that these different approaches add to the confusion and serve to degrade the profession — especially since there isn’t a recognized governing body (like PMI). Talk about confusion.

On the second point, I’d like to relate what was important to me when I was a Product Management leader. What mattered most was what an employee could actually do and what results they could achieve. My job was to equip them with tools, instill a mindset of business thinking, and to continually challenge them. This is why I do what I do for a living now.

I certainly do not devalue the benefit of traditional education and academics in all disciplines. They certainly play an important role in the building a person’s knowledge base. However there are serious problems that I see in companies today where there is a very big gap between employee knowledge and their ability to effectively carry out work. It’s not with everyone or every organization, but I see enough of it to be concerned.

I feel passionately about the need to professionalize the field of Product Management. This is why I wrote “The Product Manager’s Desk Reference.” It is my contribution to codify the body of knowledge for Product Management. Its emphasis is on building both knowledge AND experience. Certainly, there are books that have been written, and there will be books in the future that will try to assert that their views on the right way to do Product Management. These may proliferate the way certifications already proliferated. However, in the end, product managers, at all levels, must possess some very important characteristics, some of which include:

1) A solid, holistic understanding of how business works
2) A thirst for business and market facts and data
3) A mindset for bringing data together to form a defensible, fact-based go-forward posture
4) The ability to bring a cross-functional constituency together to act as a unified bloc to meet and beat the competition
5) Sharing what they’ve learned with others so that everyone can benefit from a growing body of experience
6) A common vocabulary and methodology for carrying out work
7) The ability to write clearly, present effectively, and to be persuasive
8) To build relationships both across their organizations and with customers, partners, and other stakeholders

There will certainly be much debate about this topic. However, these debates will continue as debates until product managers are so incredibly effective, that this topic will be rendered irrelevant.

Stewart

On PE as a license – fair enough. On certifaction, I believe it has value in providing a short-hand for conversation. If someone has a certification with which I am familiar, we share some commonality in concepts and language – allowing me to quickly try and develop trust that they have the skills, and our communication is simplified.

At the end of the day, it is about trust, and no certification has that explicitly – but it does make a good first impression, and may make it easier (conversationally) for me to gain trust when I don’t already have it.

Also – great point about 10-years-and-what’s-next? Reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon – “You’re too important to promote.”

Great point about tribes. Trust has always been the most effective attribute when hiring someone, in my opinion. Much easier to rely on existing trust networks than to try and develop trust during a 30 minute phone screen – or even a two-day onsite grilling.

Is this where I get to insert the obligatory (and well worn) “faster horses” quote? In the article I wrote comparing Buyer Personas and User Personas, part of the undertone is that you have to think about what buyers want (based on their model of what they think is needed) and on what users need.

Crowd sourcing may be able to help with the former, but without synthesis, it will fail to identify user needs. People just don’t express their needs (directly). When we had a 9 year old in the house, she “needed” a pony. No automation (until after AI reaches the singularity, and maybe not then) will be able to do that. Until machine translation can handle idioms, I’m not even worried that this is somewhere on the horizon.

Hopefully I’m not just being the product management equivalent of John Henry here.

Building on what David said (and admittedly sorta off topic), I see these whispers about crowdsourcing type solutions (i.e. idea management) replacing product management. The premise is the crowd will tell us what they want and prioritize. Unfortunately the two forces working against us and for them is that in some industries this model can work and the other force is that in some organizations leadership doesn’t understand product management principles. So the evangelism continues!

Stewart

Certificates reduce pay. When pay falls, motivation follows. We do not have enough math and science grads, because the dot boom ended mid-career careers, and their kids saw it. Some of those kids didn’t get to go to college. And, once you understand that your education and experience is just a roller coaster, loyalty to a profession goes out the window. Hopefully, you’ve found a loyalty to your passion instead.

Certifications are a crock. Product management is being commoditized as we speak. Soon, very soon, the product management will be an app, rather than a person.

The few professional organizations I’ve been in were voluntary organizations that had no regulatory power, and because they were 401-c organizations, educational, they were prohibited from lobbying for such a license. The engineering organizations manage, but their charters are more complex. All these voluntary organizations do is sell to us as a market–period. One of the ones I was in didn’t even define a curriculum. They let some other organization do it, and the defining organzation hijacked the profession. All a pragmatic certificate means is that the person had the money to buy it. Maybe they had to attend. Maybe they had to take a test that day, but whatever, and no matter how good it is there is no comparison between it and say a PE.

The engineering organizations own the word “Engineer,” and there has been some effort, particularly in Texas to professionalize “Software Engineering,” which now, in Texas, requires the passage of the PE. That is very limiting to programmers of the non-PE variety, and not in their best interest either, because being a PE, also means clients can sue you, so you have to insure yourself.

The PDMA NPD certificate requires a much longer commitment, but still the PDMA sells to me, and at the chapter level, not very well. This with my having been to board meetings of two local chapters over the last year. Sad.

And then there is the false confidence created by difficult and stringent certification requirements. It’s a bit like the idiotic product management job postings that require ten years of experience in the industry and a master’s degree. Yes, it certainly does narrow the field of candidates. But it likely screens out many of the best candidates.

It may be because getting the PE was really damn hard – 2/3 of all people who try it fail the first time, it is two 4-hour exams separated by at least a year, you have to have at least 4 years of experience practicing as an engineer to be eligible to take it, and you have to have someone who is already a PE vouch for you before they let you take the exam.

I don’t know how accurate it is, but I’ve heard many people describe the PE as an analog to the CPA for accountants and passing the bar for lawyers.

I think maybe that draconian level of control of the certification makes it a better filter – still not sufficient, but does provide some data through a shared-understanding of shared-experiences.

In your experience, are LinkedIn recommendations useful as a stopgap / proxy? I find that they are at least effective at setting the tone, and provide “early filtering” info.

Certifications only cover the knowledge part, a necessary but insufficient condition for demonstrating employability. Not all bad, just be clear on what they do and don’t cover.

Our STAR (Situation/Task, Action, Result) stories cover the experience part…initially … and our references cover their validation. Results should always have some meaningful metric (e.g. RUM — revenue, units, margin).

To demonstrate skill though is tougher since there is rarely enough time in an interview process to do so. This is why referrals are SO important for job seekers since others can vouch for your skill with their reputation on the line (I define referrals as separate from references in this context as knowing the hiring manager). You can do a 100 day plan and a presentation, you can show your portfolio, but there is only so much time to take it all in. It just represents a sample and by default is limiting. My 2c. @harva

Just say no to certifications. If you are already doing the job, you might think, “Not my problem,” but the day will come when it will be your problem.

Look what happened with product manager certification.