---
title: "Intro"
url: "https://writing.colivetree.com/3/product/51/intro"
---

Product jobs are funny. 

You'd be offended if (rather when) anyone mixed up their terminology and called you a Project Manager. 

Yet, in many ways, there's a bit of the job that's classic PMBOK project management.

You'd be on your toes if someone asks if it's like being a Business Analyst in the old days. No! It's more than that. You're in the trenches, but you're also strategic, you're full stack.

You cringe when someone calls you the CEO of the product. "If only", you think. "I get to manage the CEO so the team isn't constantly swerving left and right getting derailed."

You're sensible to people asking how you decide what gets built when you have a designer, a head of sales, a head of marketing, the CEO, all asking for stuff to get built. "Aren't you just managing those guys' priorities?"

You're asked to be a visionary but also business savvy. To think long term, but be sensitive to the growth hack that would produce an effect just now. To stay the course, but also pivot whenever the evidence demands it. To have strong convictions, but have them loosely held.

It is precisely because you have to be all of those things, all of the time, all at once, and decide which hat is more helpful to your team and the company at any point in time, that it is such a rich and demanding job - one that's definitely not for everyone.

These are reflections on the various product (and adjacent) roles I've played over my career and how we as Product folk can adapt to become the most impactful we can in any role that we play. There is no one good way of getting the job done. These are tools and models that have helped me become stronger and ever more impactful at organizations of various sizes and shapes.

They'll continue changing, evolving and growing, but they've helped me get here and will help me get there. 

This book (is it a book?) isn't perfect by any means, but I hope it does the same for you.