Tony Fadell • Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making - The New York Times bestseller

A good product manager will do a little of everything and a great deal of all this: Spec out what the product should do and the road map for where it will go over time. Determine and maintain the messaging matrix. Work with engineering to get the product built according to spec. Work with design to make it intuitive and attractive to the target cus

However, the ultimate role of product management is making or suggesting trade-offs between the pristine, platonic ideal of beauty that the design team wants, the technical pizzazz engineering desires, the “just give me some shit I can sell” of sales, and the “this may be risky” of legal (these examples are all purposefully exaggerated).

Market confusion starts with our disconnect between understanding the product as product creators, and understanding the product as customers first perceive it.

Market confusion starts with our disconnect between understanding the product as product creators, and understanding the product as customers first perceive it.

Every product should have a story, a narrative that explains why it needs to exist and how it will solve your customer’s problems.

1. Marketing cannot just be figured out at the very end. When building a product, product management and the marketing team should be working together from the very beginning. As you build, you should continue to use marketing to evolve the story and ensure they have a voice in what the product becomes.