Does this IT role exist and, if not, can I have it?
March 30, 2022 1:14 PM Subscribe
I want to propose to my management team a new role for me but I am unsure if it might already be covered by other corporate IT / Business roles. Explanation inside...
I want to craft a new role whereby I mirror the Product Management role but from a technology perspective. My company sells services to healthcare professionals. Let's say a Product Manager proposes a new feature for one of our customer-facing applications. The PM has done all the necessary research into the market, the customer need, the financial and customer growth upsides and so forth. What they haven't done, because they do not have the knowledge to do so, is understand what technologies are available (already in-house, work in progress or entirely unknown to the company) and the many methods of implementation which could be used to maximise innovation, efficiencies in business operations, ease of implementation, cost and so forth. That's the bit that I want to do - I want to make sure we get as much value (however that might be defined) out of every penny spent on our technology as well as ensuring we are setting ourselves up to be innovative, competitive and digital-first (a CEO-driven strategic imperative).
Do you think any one or combination of the existing Technical Architects, Business Architects, Enterprise Architects, Business Analysts, Programme Management or any other type of role should already be doing this or have I stumbled across a genuine gap in our capabilities?
I want to craft a new role whereby I mirror the Product Management role but from a technology perspective. My company sells services to healthcare professionals. Let's say a Product Manager proposes a new feature for one of our customer-facing applications. The PM has done all the necessary research into the market, the customer need, the financial and customer growth upsides and so forth. What they haven't done, because they do not have the knowledge to do so, is understand what technologies are available (already in-house, work in progress or entirely unknown to the company) and the many methods of implementation which could be used to maximise innovation, efficiencies in business operations, ease of implementation, cost and so forth. That's the bit that I want to do - I want to make sure we get as much value (however that might be defined) out of every penny spent on our technology as well as ensuring we are setting ourselves up to be innovative, competitive and digital-first (a CEO-driven strategic imperative).
Do you think any one or combination of the existing Technical Architects, Business Architects, Enterprise Architects, Business Analysts, Programme Management or any other type of role should already be doing this or have I stumbled across a genuine gap in our capabilities?
In some places, this role is called "Customer Success Manager" and the role is basically as you've defined it. Their charter is to help the customers maximize their investment, have a successful roll-out, and (not surprisingly) identify other places that the product could go. In sales, this is called "land and expand."
So a new customer buys the product/service/platform, and post-sale, a CSM is tasked with making sure that everything goes well in the new deployment/migration/adoption process. It's mostly technical but has distinct project-management overtones with just a hint of sales, because everyone works in sales!
posted by jquinby at 1:24 PM on March 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
So a new customer buys the product/service/platform, and post-sale, a CSM is tasked with making sure that everything goes well in the new deployment/migration/adoption process. It's mostly technical but has distinct project-management overtones with just a hint of sales, because everyone works in sales!
posted by jquinby at 1:24 PM on March 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
Ah, to be clear - much of a CSM's work is post-sale, but they'll frequently get involved with the customer before the sale is closed - planning sessions, project whiteboarding, etc.
posted by jquinby at 1:26 PM on March 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jquinby at 1:26 PM on March 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Wouldn’t this be an Implementation Engineer?
posted by mochapickle at 1:41 PM on March 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by mochapickle at 1:41 PM on March 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
Best answer: mirror the Product Management role but from a technology perspective ... already in-house, work in progress ... I want to make sure we get as much value (however that might be defined) out of every penny spent on our technology
Do you mean getting the customer the best value for their money or getting value for your own internal engineering spend? In organizations that have both product managers and technical product managers, the technical product managers are in touch with existing product capabilities and what work is in progress. They're mostly responsible for meeting with engineering teams to coordinate their backlogs across a few projects or domains, but I think answering questions for SEs and CSMs about how the product suite meets a particular customer need is common too.
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:48 PM on March 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
Do you mean getting the customer the best value for their money or getting value for your own internal engineering spend? In organizations that have both product managers and technical product managers, the technical product managers are in touch with existing product capabilities and what work is in progress. They're mostly responsible for meeting with engineering teams to coordinate their backlogs across a few projects or domains, but I think answering questions for SEs and CSMs about how the product suite meets a particular customer need is common too.
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:48 PM on March 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
Yeah, this is what I do. I work on a platform team as a technical product manager.
posted by coldbabyshrimp at 2:10 PM on March 30, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by coldbabyshrimp at 2:10 PM on March 30, 2022 [9 favorites]
There are "inbound" product managers who are concerned with the product itself vs "outbound" PMs who worry more about pricing, packaging, and other GTM functions. There can be Software Architect roles or an Architecture Review Board who has cross-product scope to make sure the tech fits together. Or a CTO/Office of the CTO can fill the same role. A PMO (program management office) can have a similar cross-org coordination role, but more involving processes and projects than the tech itself.
posted by troyer at 3:38 PM on March 30, 2022
posted by troyer at 3:38 PM on March 30, 2022
Best answer: A lot of different answers in here. I don't think you've discovered something new, but I think the role you are talking about is probably non-existent at a smaller companies and handled by different people depending on culture at larger companies.
My company has Solutions Architects, Enterprise Architects, Implementation Engineers, Business Analysts, Customer Success Managers, and Technical Product Managers.
Implementation Engineers and Customer Success Managers are 100% customer-facing. An implementation engineer takes the software product our company builds and goes into a specific customer and makes it do what that customer wants in their environment. There are best practices and playbooks and such they follow but generally these folks are myopically focused on getting one customer implemented so we can recognize the revenue. A Customer Success Manager is after implementation and just makes sure the customer is happy putting in good scores on our feedback surveys, if low scores come in they try to figure out why, they can funnel upsell leads, and hold hands during issues.
Technical Product Managers and Business Analysts are both internal but interact with customers at times. Their main job is take the product manager's vision and do the details. For us, the roles are similar, but the Technical Product Manager reports into our product organization while the Business Analyst reports into our development organization.
In a lot of companies the Solutions Architect is a pre-sales concept, but for us the Solutions Architect is more of a hands on software architect working completely internally. They do the high level systems design (break your microservices down in this way, use this database technollogy, don't do that because this other team already did it go talk to them, etc.). This is a development role and is pretty senior for us.
Lastly, the Enterprise Architect has a purview of all software we build and had advice and best practices and guard rails for anything that might come up. "Oh your usage pattern has both heavy reads and heavy writes. Here is our EA one pager on CQRS". This is a very senior development role.
To me, you need to add more information. Are you a developer or less technical? In your vision, do you work customer facing or with your internal development teams? In general for things like this, I would decide which of these fairly standard roles you want to see yourself in and then try to sell that title and job description to your boss. This will help you because there is a starting point for people to also see what you are seeing, but also when you look for your next job you will have the right title on your resume.
posted by cmm at 8:44 PM on March 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
My company has Solutions Architects, Enterprise Architects, Implementation Engineers, Business Analysts, Customer Success Managers, and Technical Product Managers.
Implementation Engineers and Customer Success Managers are 100% customer-facing. An implementation engineer takes the software product our company builds and goes into a specific customer and makes it do what that customer wants in their environment. There are best practices and playbooks and such they follow but generally these folks are myopically focused on getting one customer implemented so we can recognize the revenue. A Customer Success Manager is after implementation and just makes sure the customer is happy putting in good scores on our feedback surveys, if low scores come in they try to figure out why, they can funnel upsell leads, and hold hands during issues.
Technical Product Managers and Business Analysts are both internal but interact with customers at times. Their main job is take the product manager's vision and do the details. For us, the roles are similar, but the Technical Product Manager reports into our product organization while the Business Analyst reports into our development organization.
In a lot of companies the Solutions Architect is a pre-sales concept, but for us the Solutions Architect is more of a hands on software architect working completely internally. They do the high level systems design (break your microservices down in this way, use this database technollogy, don't do that because this other team already did it go talk to them, etc.). This is a development role and is pretty senior for us.
Lastly, the Enterprise Architect has a purview of all software we build and had advice and best practices and guard rails for anything that might come up. "Oh your usage pattern has both heavy reads and heavy writes. Here is our EA one pager on CQRS". This is a very senior development role.
To me, you need to add more information. Are you a developer or less technical? In your vision, do you work customer facing or with your internal development teams? In general for things like this, I would decide which of these fairly standard roles you want to see yourself in and then try to sell that title and job description to your boss. This will help you because there is a starting point for people to also see what you are seeing, but also when you look for your next job you will have the right title on your resume.
posted by cmm at 8:44 PM on March 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
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If not, that sounds like....Tier III support, honestly, because an Architect designed the system, but your questions are about new implementations of what's already built.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:19 PM on March 30, 2022 [3 favorites]