When I moved from leading one product to directing several teams, my calendar changed more than my title did. I spent less time in backlog refinement and more time on questions that cut across products.
The job is part strategy, part operations, and part translation. You explain engineering constraints to executives and business priorities to engineers, often in the same afternoon.
Where the time goes
- Deciding what the portfolio should and should not do
- Making the case for funding
- Coaching product managers
- Keeping integrations between teams from falling through the cracks
- Owning the unglamorous operational work