Two things I love about being a Platform PM
A short piece about the emerging field of platform product management.
Before we enter the Lovefest maybe I should probably start by describing what a Platform Product Manager is. ChatGPT gives this definition:
A Platform Product Manager is a professional responsible for overseeing the development and management of platform-based products within a company. A platform product is a foundational technology or service that serves as a base upon which other products or applications can be built. This concept is commonly seen in technology companies where they create platforms like APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), frameworks, cloud services, and other infrastructure components that enable the development of various products and services on top of them.
Though this covers most of the bases it doesn’t convey much in terms of feeling or emotion. Instead, it comes off as dry and possibly a bit boring. Whereas the reality is neither of these two things.
So why do I love about being a Platform PM?
Immediacy
If you are a typical Enterprise Software PM and you want to speak to a customer you will usually have to speak to a customer success manager. If they like you, they will introduce you to a customer. It may be an especially disgruntled one that they want to get off their backs. If the customer is close to renewal, the account manager may veto any contact.
Let's say you work on a consumer-facing product, then data protection rules will prevent you from simply reaching out to live customers. You’ll have to work with user researchers and dangle Amazon vouchers in front of potential users. Suddenly lots of customers will want to speak to you but for all the wrong reasons.
When you are a Platform PM, life is simple. If you want to talk to a customer you have Slack and as a next step Google Calendar and Zoom. Your customers are your colleagues. Nobody is going to babysit the relationship. A great question to conclude your conversation with is: “Who should I speak to next”.
Being able to easily speak to my customers every day is probably the best part of my job.
Rapid Cycle Time
This could also be filed under immediacy.
Something else I love about platform product management is the speed with which you can have an impact. The first point was about how quickly you can get discovery done. Once you are clear about the key problems, assuming your team can come up with a solution then generally speaking you can get changes out there quickly. It doesn’t have to be vetted by Sales or Marketing and let's not even get started about Legal/Privacy etc. It is all internal after all and will be consumed by your colleagues. This allows you to get changes out there quickly, get feedback and iterate quickly.
This can lead to some very satisfying optimization cycles.
Final Thoughts
There is a lot more to love about Platform Product Management and of course, there are plenty of less fun things. For me, Immediacy and Rapid Cycle time are two key loops that make my job worthwhile.
I will be planning to write a few more bite-sized pieces about the emerging field of Platform Product Management in the coming weeks.