As I am not a developer myself, I was wondering if there are others like me doing pm work for internal platforms? How common or uncommon is this? 😰

Project or product manager? If the former, then there's more but less success. I strongly consider coming to my talk on the role of the technical product manager 😉

Yep, here as well! I think everyone in this channel 😄 But not too common yet. However, hopefully that's changing with the movement of "Platform as a Product".

Comes down to leadership and experience. If you have a PM focus you can build a great system. Otherwise an alternative is a Engineering Manager. That can work. Just comes down to people in the right place with the right ability.

I’m a PM in platforms

I’m a platform PM, and I’m hiring… https://www.eventbritecareers.com/jobs/senior-product-manager-platform-infrastructure-remote-united-states

I do product discovery and stakeholder management but our tool is just one of many in the platform. I guess my question is how easy it is to understand developers' needs when you are not one yourself? But I see I am in good company here 😃

Listening

I think it helps being a developer or former developer, but you can still get to understand things like pain points. Ask developers to “demo” the stuff they don’t like.

Just being a dev isn't enough. Product discovery is still required :-)

Product managers rarely get to join a new team where they understand the product deeply. It’s always a process - you can still gain all the knowledge / context you need without being a dev yourself. 🙂

Sorry, I misunderstood the question the first time. In my experience, it is easier and faster for a good PM to move into an unfamiliar space, even a very technical one, than for an engineer to build product sense. As the platform engineering space grows — explodes, even — I think there are a growing number of folks like you, @Areti Panou.

As an old boss called it, the product fiddler or dabbler is someone who plays with the product.

I understand their needs (I hope) but I feel I would be much better or faster at that if I was more knowledgeable technically. And as this is a very technical field I was wondering if there were others with similar, let's say challenges. Really appreciate the conversation and points here

Definitely a big challenge for highly technical products.

If you really want, you could have someone take you through a 101. Or perhaps build a hello world version yourself (or with someone). Not the same, but gives you a better idea what they're doing?

Well that much I can do but if you ask me the pain of getting the right authorizations for the right Kubernetes workspace...

there are architects and engineers there to do that for us easily

I personally believe that business value is the great equalizer for product owners regardless of their background.

our job is making decisions, Kubernetes are temporary

It's good to know that this is the way to go @Alan Barr

This is pretty common. Like everyone said above it is key to remember to treat this as a product your are developing for your customers, being internal or external.

I believe not having a Dev background as PM can be used to your advantage as you force your users (engineers) to formulate their pain/need/goals in “human” language (and not Kubernetes-something-something). Challenge your users to really explain WHY they need something (like a specific authorization in Kubernetes). Platform Architects and Platform Engineers should help bridge the knowledge gap between a Product Owner/Manager if needed (you’re not alone in the platform journey, use the power of the platform team 🙂 ) so bring them along when you talk to your users.

I'm a PM who made the journey from Enterprise architecture/technical consulting (non-dev) to being a PM for an Internal Developer Platform. @Areti Panou Happy to share my experience and also learn from others!

Just found this thread, thanks @Areti Panou for starting it! I've done some coding for myself, but I've never been a professional developer. I came up from a technical program management background and am transitioning to product management in my new role. I am finding it valuable to my team to have more of an external perspective, but lots of impostor syndrome gets in there!

We have to start somewhere, 😜 I never use MongoDB but I get the idea and get things done

@Tracy Kropp this is very recognisable 😂 I am comfortable with basic to advanced programming, but still a huge gap compared to my platform teams - much more than my previous product team. Share this also with the team. They're very likely to help you out and do some platform engineering 101 😁