When you're start working in an unexplored field of study, such as PM in the technology industry, it's tempting to propose the Grand Theory Of Everything (GTOE). It's also the worst possible time to develop a GTOE.

Opinion is cheap
Two years ago, when I started this job, I knew I'd have a full research agenda. Very few people took on the job of pundit, arguing for a particular vision of how the PM function should work. Even fewer had any hard data on how it actually does work, in practice. Before making any sweeping statements about the profession, I needed to fill in some big empirical holes.

How diverse is the PM job description, across companies? Which sort of requirements do PM teams give priority? Does moving from an on-premise to a SaaS model have an effect on the PM role? Moving at an Agile pace must have some effect on the rest of the company—but what is it? Without answering these questions, it's next to impossible to give advice.

Here's an important rule of thumb, if you're a researcher such as myself: Don't name something unless it really exists. That sounds fairly obvious, but unfortunately, in the history of the technology industry, there's a sad history of failed neologisms. In some cases, these phrases exaggerated the importance or complexity of some relatively mundane aspect of the world. That's how the superheated usage of the term knowledge management turned into a four letter word. In other cases, people use neologisms designed to describe things that might (or might not) exist in the future as if they already existed now. I've heard some presentations about the Semantic Web that certainly fall into that category.

Therefore, when I use a phrase like social product management, believe me, I'm using it very carefully. Over the course of the last week, I've had occasion to use it on several occasions, most recently at last night's open house for PMs in the Forrester Foster City office. (Thanks to all who attended, by the way.)

On Thursday, November 5th, from 4:00 to 5:30 PM, Forrester Research is hosting an informal discussion about product management and product marketing issues. This session is the first in what we hope will be a series of conversations about these topics, scheduled at Forrester’s Bay Area office in Foster City.

The topic for this kick-off session is how social media is changing the job description for product managers and product marketers. I'll lead the discussion on this topic, since I just did an all-day workshop about "social product management."

The operative word in that last sentence is discussion. If you want to be pummeled with PowerPoints, look elsewhere. We want to host discussions among product managers and product marketers. Our role is to provide insights from our research, and give you a chance to meet and speak with your peers.

[Last in this series about the Tech Product Management/Marketing Job And Department Profiler. Previous posts cover its origins, the design decisions that went into it, and the job specializations it profiles.]

From my grad student years, I know that a lot of mathematical models fall flat on their simulated faces because they don't get the testing they should. In the case of the PM job calculator/department profiler, I had to apply three different tests.

The tasks are many and varied
Last year, when I did the survey research on the state of the product management/product marketing job in technology companies, I vetted the list of tasks with a lot of PMs. Using their feedback, I added tasks, rethought others, and even merged a couple. The resulting list represented everything that PMs might be doing, depending on where they work.

That was the easy part.