Part of P-Camp‘s excitement was gathering so many product managers together in person – twice last year’s attendees – for sharing and informal networking.  Putting physical faces to our online personas. This prompts some thoughts about product managers being socially isolated within their technical organizations.

First an observation: Product management is a very small portion of any product organization.  In waterfall development teams, one PM to each 20 (or 50!) techies isn’t uncommon.  As motivators and enforcers and cheerleaders and decision-makers, we spend most of our time working the internal (technical) teams and the outbound (market-facing) groups.  There’s not much energy left for each other. Continue reading →