Marty Cagan posted another great installment in his series on how to be a good manager of product managers. In Coaching Tools — The Plan he describes the different ways he would encourage product managers to skill up in areas where they need to grow.

It’s hard to pick just one quote to post because the whole article is excellent, but these paragraphs on collaboration particularly stood out for me:

Modern product management is all about true collaboration between product, design and engineering. This begins with ensuring the product manager is knowledgeable about the real contribution of product design and engineering.

The PM does not need to be personally skilled in either design or engineering (most aren’t – although many PM’s think they’re great designers) but they do need to understand and appreciate their contributions to the point where they understand that what each of design and engineering brings to the table is just as essential as what the PM brings.