“Customer Analyst” is a much better title for the role held by “Product Managers”.
More than anything engineers need to understand the customer needs. The title “Product Manager” creates confusion that this person should own product features, which is a dysfunction because the skillset to collect data on customers is fairly disjoint from the ability to make design tradeoffs.
It would also emphasize how time should be spent - actually talking to customers - rather than mostly negotiating detailed waterfall specifications that usually trail (not guide) actual product development
Exactly, my current exposure with PMs is that they are feature driven, not focused on problems specifically. And as someone who works with customers in pains me deeply when they just don't get it. The customers, the ones who will use the product are right there and they have no relationship with them.
More than anything engineers need to understand the customer needs. The title “Product Manager” creates confusion that this person should own product features, which is a dysfunction because the skillset to collect data on customers is fairly disjoint from the ability to make design tradeoffs.
It would also emphasize how time should be spent - actually talking to customers - rather than mostly negotiating detailed waterfall specifications that usually trail (not guide) actual product development