Why Being Technical Matters for Your Product Manager

When we look at the State of Software Development Report 2019 by Coding Sans, the results are striking. On one hand, the report shows double-digit growth in outsourcing. Yet only 21% of those outsourcing were completely satisfied with the experience. That gap -- between common practice and successful outcome -- is where technical product management matters most.

In many cases, non-tech companies outsource their software to developers because they have very limited in-house development capabilities. The company outsourcing custom application development knows its business, industry, and audience very well. However, they may have no real understanding of software development. The roles are then switched to the developers, who must learn the business case for their client's software project -- a task they are rarely equipped or incentivized to do well.

A technical product manager fills this gap. They speak the language of business requirements and can translate those requirements into technical specifications that developers can actually build from. Without that bridge, the development team builds what they think the client wants, the client receives something they did not expect, and both sides are frustrated. The 79% dissatisfaction rate in outsourcing is not primarily a development quality problem. It is a communication and translation problem.

The question is not whether a product manager needs to write code. They do not. The question is whether they have enough technical depth to evaluate tradeoffs, push back on scope, ask the right questions during architecture discussions, and spot when a technical decision is going to create problems downstream. That depth is what separates a product manager who can lead an outsourced team from one who is entirely dependent on what the development team tells them.