Product Managers are like flour, hear me out
The unseen ingredient that holds it all together
There is a term you’ll hear thrown around a lot in modern software development: “vertical value.” This phrase stems from the concept of taking a bite of cake. You want that bite to have all the layers and to do that you have to cut it vertically, not horizontally. The analogy is that product teams want to give their customers the perfect bite, including all the various flavors and textures that make a vertical slice better than a horizontal one.
So if the product is a cake, how do product managers contribute? They are not the chefs, or the decorators, or the menu planners. PMs aren’t creative in the way customers always appreciate and PM work doesn’t result in something tangible like implementable design or committed code. Without us you can still serve up a beautiful product that functions. But, like baking, we want our customers to get a bite that hits all the right spots and meets their needs.
When baking a cake flour is the element that holds it all together. When you eat a great piece of cake you don’t think about the flour, you’re focused on how beautiful it looks and tastes. PMs should be the flour: do the things that hold it all together for the customer, business, and our teams.