Thesis: Infrastructure Product Management is a unique category of PM-ing and needs its own best practices

To address this, I started by asking a Product Owner colleague of mine at Giant Swarm, “How is doing product here different from doing product in your previous company?”

The answer:

Omg I don’t think there’s one thing that is the same 😂

I’ll start by thinking through and writing the answers to the questions below myself. Before “Kubernetes as a Service” at Giant Swarm, I used to manage a “marketplace product,” where we connected “Subject Matter Experts” with “Knowledge Seekers.” Customers are users within the enterprise, such as investors, consulting firms, and government contractors. Then, interview 3-10 product people from different backgrounds.

What are the similarities and differences between doing product for an infrastructure product vs in your previous product (please state)?

• How you work with your team?
• How you work with “stakeholders” outside your team?
• How you work with users?
• How you decide what gets built? (e.g. Product Vision, Strategy, Roadmap, User Stories and Acceptance Criteria)
• How you prioritize? (To estimate or not? Goals and OKRs?)
• How you organize? (Sprints? Boards?)

My hypothesis is that “more leadership, less domain knowledge” from the product person to address all of the above would be a thing.