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Success factors for program managers

In response to my post on the lost cult of PM at Microsoft, Charlie Owen’s was kind enough to post his notes from a conversation with Joe Belfiore, my first boss as a PM, and now a VP at Microsoft, where he outlines what it takes to be a great program manager.

1) Maniacally focus on building a product your customers will love.

– Pound, pound, pound on the features while they are being developed all the way through the process.
– Constantly ask ‘How do we know this is good?’
– Perceive the reaction of others to your features.
– Know others will want to have an opinion.
– Recognize constraints make it hard to develop products customers will love.
– This takes energy, persistence and creativity.

Highly recommended. It’s short, memorable and hard to achieve. Read the full post: Success factors for program managers

An interesting follow up question is if great PMs focus on making products customers will love, why does it seem Microsoft generally fails at this.