Debunking the 10 Biggest Myths in Product Management

The role of a product manager is one of the most dynamic and influential in the modern tech landscape. Often described as the sweet spot between business, technology, and user experience, it’s a career path shrouded in both allure and ambiguity. This ambiguity, however, has given rise to a set of pervasive myths-oversimplifications and misconceptions that can mislead newcomers and create friction even within seasoned teams.

These myths paint a picture of a lone genius, a dictatorial “mini-CEO,” or a feature-obsessed visionary. The reality is far more nuanced, collaborative, and challenging. To truly succeed in product management, one must first unlearn these common fallacies. Let’s pull back the curtain and debunk the top 10 myths with a dose of reality, backed by insights from industry leaders and research.

Myth 1: The Product Manager is the “CEO of the Product”

Why This Myth Is Tempting: This is arguably the most famous (and most flattering) myth about product managers. The phrase was popularized by Ben Horowitz in the late ’90s to instill a profound sense of ownership and responsibility. It conjures up a seductive narrative: as a PM, you have ultimate authority over your product-you call the shots, set the direction, and the team marches to the beat of your drum. Who wouldn’t want to be seen as the CEO of something? It implies power and control, which is alluring if you’re eager to make an impact.

Reality Check: While the sense of ownership is accurate, the authority implied by “CEO of the product” is not. In truth, product managers lead by influence, not by command. Unlike a real CEO, a PM usually has no direct org chart power over the engineers, designers, or analysts on the core product team. You can’t hand out raises, hire or fire team members, or unilaterally set company-level strategy. As product guru Marty Cagan notes, the obvious way a PM is not like a CEO is “the lack of authority”svpg.com. In other words, you’re accountable for outcomes without the formal power to simply order people around. Your success hinges on your ability to articulate a compelling vision, back it up with data and user insights, and persuade everyone-from executives to engineers-that your strategy is sound.

Modern tech companies actually thrive by empowering cross-functional teams and fostering shared leadership. A 2022 McKinsey study found that firms embracing cross-functional, autonomous teams are 40% more likely to achieve high performance than those with rigid silos blogs.psico-smart.com. In such environments, leadership is about influence and collaboration rather than top-down directives. If you march in wearing a crown and issuing edicts, you’ll quickly alienate the very people you need on your side.

What to Do Instead: Trade the crown for a conductor’s baton. A great product manager is less a commander and more a communicator. Think of yourself as the conductor of an orchestra: you don’t play all the instruments, but you ensure every section is working in harmony to create a beautiful symphony. Focus on building trust with your team. Invest time in listening and connecting, so you understand the perspectives of engineering, design, marketing, and other stakeholders. Cultivate the art of influence by being transparent, empathetic, and well-prepared-bring data, customer quotes, and a clear rationale to every discussion. As a PM, your job isn’t to boss the team around; it’s to earn their respect and inspire them with a vision so that they want to march with you. Or as one product leader put it, the title “gives you nothing beyond a shot at earning the respect of your team”svpg.com. Lead with that humility and you’ll go much further than any pseudo-CEO ever could.

Myth 2: You Must Have a Technical Background

Why This Myth Is Tempting: On the surface, it sounds logical: if you’re managing a software product, surely you need to be a former engineer or computer science major who can code, architect systems, and debate the finer points of database indexing, right? This belief can intimidate many aspiring product managers. People self-select out of the field, worrying “I’m not technical enough.” After all, how can you gain the respect of a development team if you don’t know your Kubernetes from your Kafka? It’s easy to assume that without a CS degree, you’ll be lost or not taken seriously.

Reality Check: A computer science or engineering degree can be helpful, but it’s far from a requirement for product management. What’s essential is being technically literate, not necessarily being an actual engineer. You should understand how software gets built, know the basics of the tech stack your product uses, and be able to have credible conversations with your dev team. But you don’t need to write the code yourself. In fact, product managers come from a vast array of backgrounds – and that diversity is a strength. According to Product School’s industry report, today’s PMs come from many backgrounds, including engineering, yes, but also business, design, marketing, operations and more productschool.com. The range of distinct backgrounds in the field strongly signals that a formal technical degree “is not a fixed prerequisite” for success.

Equally (if not more) important than coding skills are skills in strategy, user empathy, communication, and analysis. Julie Zhuo, a former VP of Design at Facebook who worked with countless PMs, put it well: a product manager’s primary job is to make sure the team is solving the right problems for users – a skill that isn’t exclusive to any one degree or discipline. You need to be able to synthesize user research, data, and business needs into a coherent plan. Whether you originally studied English lit or electrical engineering, you’ll have to learn on the job anyway; no one college program teaches “how to be a PM.”

And remember, you can always learn more technical concepts as you go (and you should). Many non-engineer PMs pick up enough coding or technical knowledge to be dangerous. Conversely, there are plenty of PMs with coding backgrounds who succeed not because of their coding chops, but because they excel at big-picture thinking and teamwork. As long as you have enough technical understanding to grasp the feasibility of a feature and the complexity of a technical trade-off, you’re fine. One survey even found that while two-thirds of PMs acknowledged technical degrees or MBAs might offer an edge, they broadly agreed that there is no single “right” background for product management careers productschool.com.

What to Do Instead: If you lack a formal tech background, don’t fret-fill your knowledge gaps. You can become technically literate without getting another degree. Take an online course on software development basics or read up on system design. More informally, ask your engineers to explain things to you (most are happy to when you show genuine curiosity). Learn the difference between client-side and server-side, between an API and an SDK, between MySQL and MongoDB. You don’t need to master them; you just need to grok the implications. Also leverage your non-technical strengths: maybe you have a marketing background-great, you can deeply understand customer messaging; or you came from design-excellent, you can champion the user experience. Effective product teams thrive on diverse skills. In short, speak the language of technology, but don’t feel like you must have written Shakespearean-quality code to be a credible PM. By combining technical empathy with strong soft skills, you’ll earn your team’s respect and guide the product to success.

Myth 3: Product Management is the Same as Project Management

Why This Myth Is Tempting: The names sound similar, and in casual conversation even seasoned folks sometimes mix them up. Both roles involve planning, working with cross-functional teams, meeting deadlines, and lots of communication. On the surface, a day in the life of a product manager and a project manager can look alike: roadmaps, status meetings, addressing blockers, prioritizing tasks. It’s no wonder many people (and unfortunately some companies) conflate the two. If you’re new to tech, you might hear “PM” and not even realize it could mean two very different roles. The myth is that a product manager is basically a glorified project manager who also knows a bit about the market.

Reality Check: Despite overlapping skills, the focus of each role is fundamentally different. A project manager is primarily concerned with execution and delivery – the classic triple constraint of scope, schedule, budget. They live in the world of “how” and “when.” A project manager’s success is measured by whether the project was delivered on time, on budget, and within scope. They coordinate resources, maintain Gantt charts, identify risks, and ensure that what was promised gets delivered predictably. In contrast, a product manager is obsessed with the strategy and vision – the “what” and “why.” The product manager cares deeply about building the right thing for the user and the business. Their success is measured by outcomes: user adoption, satisfaction, revenue, etc., which result from making the right product decisions. In short, project managers worry about building the thing right, while product managers worry about building the right thing.

Think of it like a road trip: If developing a product is a journey, the product manager decides where we’re going and why (the destination and purpose). The project manager figures out how and when we’ll get there – the route, the logistics, making sure everyone gets in the car on time and we have enough gas. Both roles are vital. If nobody’s thinking about why we’re driving to City X, you might end up going in circles. If nobody’s managing the when/how, you might run out of gas halfway. They’re complementary, but not identical.

In practice, many strong product/project partnerships exist, often with a project or program manager handling execution details so the product manager can focus on product strategy. Confusion arises in organizations that don’t recognize the difference, sometimes expecting one person to do it all. While a product manager absolutely needs solid project management skills (you can’t ignore timelines completely), their primary directive is different. They are the voice of the customer and the market internally, ensuring the team builds something users actually want and will pay for, rather than just making sure the trains run on time.

What to Do Instead: If you’re a product manager, partner closely with a project manager (if you have one). Respect the distinct value each role brings. Let the project manager own the detailed project plan, Jira tickets, and stand-up logistics, so you can spend more time on product vision, user research, and experimenting to find product-market fit. If you don’t have a project manager on your team, you’ll need to wear that hat at times, but be mindful to not get so caught up in task tracking that you lose sight of the product strategy. Use tools and lightweight processes to keep the execution on track (e.g., simple roadmaps, weekly check-ins), but remember your north star is solving user problems. For stakeholders and bosses, help educate them on the difference: share documents or articles that clarify how product management is not just project management. Over time, success will speak for itself: delivering a project on time that flops isn’t success, but adjusting the plan to deliver a product that users love, even if it took a bit longer – that is success. Aim for that outcome-driven mindset.

Myth 4: The Customer is Always Right

Why This Myth Is Tempting: “Listen to your users” is practically the Prime Directive of product development. Countless books and gurus (and yes, memes) extol the virtue of being customer-centric. It’s easy to misinterpret this wisdom as “just build whatever the customer asks for.” After all, if users are literally telling you what they want, who are you to say no? A big customer requests a specific feature – we must do it or risk losing them, right? Many new PMs, eager to please and to demonstrate customer empathy, fall into the trap of being feature order-takers. And let’s face it, if something goes wrong, it’s comforting to say, “Well, the customer wanted it this way.” Thus, the myth persists that great product management = doing exactly what users ask for because the “voice of the customer” is infallible.

Reality Check: Customers are experts in their problems, not necessarily in the best solutions. There’s a famous (and somewhat apocryphal) Henry Ford quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”Whether or not Ford actually said this, the underlying point stands: people often imagine improvements in terms of the familiar (a faster horse) rather than envisioning the revolutionary (an automobile). If you take every customer request at face value and build it, you risk ending up with a bloated, incoherent product that tries to be everything to everyone-and in doing so, becomes nothing special to anyone. In product circles, there’s even a term for this pitfall: the “feature factory,” churning out feature after feature with no strategy.

Does this mean customers are clueless? Not at all. It means you have to dig deeper. When a user says, “I need Feature X,” treat that as a starting point. Why do they need Feature X? What underlying problem are they trying to solve? Often, you’ll find multiple users asking for seemingly different things that actually point to the same root cause. As renowned innovation professor Clayton Christensen framed it, figure out the “Job to be Done.” For example, several users might ask for an “export to Excel” button. If you blindly obey, you add it and pat yourself on the back. But talk to them and you might learn the real job to be done is “I need to share a report of my data with my boss.” Aha! That insight could lead you to a better solution-maybe an automated weekly email to the boss, or an in-app dashboard-something far more elegant than a mere Excel dump. As the saying goes, “people are experts about their problems, not the solutions.” It’s not the customer’s job to design the solution; that’s your job chattermill.com.

Also, consider that customers (especially vocal ones) tend to be existing users. If you only build what current users want, you might overlook the needs of future users or the wider market. You risk local optimization. Steve Jobs famously quipped that customers don’t know what they want until you show it to them (though caution: don’t use this as an excuse to ignore feedback entirely!). The key is balance: be customer-informed, not customer-dictated.

What to Do Instead: Practice the art of active listening and problem discovery. When customers give feedback or feature requests, thank them-then ask “Why?”... and then ask “Why?” again. (Yes, do the Five Whys, like a toddler on a mission.) Aim to understand the underlying use case or pain point. If one customer requests a red button and another demands a blue toggle, don’t get caught in a feature tug-of-war; find the common pain point both are trying to solve. Build a habit of using techniques like user interviews, surveys, and observing user behavior (analytics) to get a full picture of needs.

Use customer input as inspiration and data, not as an ordered checklist. For every request, consider: how does this align with our product vision? How many users likely have this need? Is there a simpler or more innovative way to address it? Sometimes you will say “yes” to exactly what they asked for, because it makes sense. Other times you’ll devise a different solution that solves the core problem in a way the customer never imagined. And sometimes, you’ll decide not to solve that problem at all right now (which is okay-just communicate clearly why).

Above all, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that being customer-centric means having no filter. Be empathetic, understand your users deeply, but remember: they hired you to figure out the best solution. In practice, this means you might tell a customer, “I hear you want a faster horse. We’ve discovered you really need a faster way to get from A to B, so we’re building you a Model T. It’s not a horse, but trust me, you’ll like it better.” Focus on the outcomes (solving problems, delivering value) rather than blindly implementing outputs (features).

Myth 5: Product Managers Come Up With All the Great Ideas

Why This Myth Is Tempting: Ah, the myth of the lone visionary. This one is fueled by cultural archetypes of famous product innovators. Think of Steve Jobs sketching the iPhone interface on a napkin, or Elon Musk dreaming up the next big thing in a sudden burst of genius. It’s a romantic notion: the PM as the idea factory, the person who single-handedly conceives the breakthrough features that delight users and leave competitors in the dust. Many new PMs feel pressure that they’re supposed to be the smartest person in the room with regard to product ideas. After all, if you’re the “product owner,” shouldn’t the great product ideas be yours? This myth is further perpetuated in companies that treat PMs as the sole decision-makers for product scope, giving the impression that all creativity must funnel through that one role.

Reality Check: Innovation is a team sport. The best ideas rarely emerge fully formed from one person’s brain in isolation. In reality, successful products are usually the result of collaboration-lots of brains chipping away at a problem from different angles. A support rep hears users complain every day about a missing capability and has an insightful suggestion. A sales engineer improvises a clever workaround for a customer, seeding an idea for a new feature. An engineer, hacking on a fun project over the weekend, stumbles on a new technology that could open up possibilities the product team never considered. A designer, frustrated with the current flow, mocks up a streamlined alternative that turns out to be brilliant. If the product manager is heads-down solely on their own ideas, all those other gems might be missed.

Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull illustrated this well in Creativity, Inc.. At Pixar, they use a “Braintrust” of creative leaders who gather to candidly challenge and build upon each other’s ideas to improve a film in progress. Catmull admits that early versions of their movies suck – and only through iterative team input do they turn them into great films medium.com. The Braintrust’s job is to “push towards excellence, and root out mediocrity” through frank collaboration medium.com. In other words, it’s the process, not a single moment of lone genius, that yields greatness. The parallel in product management is clear: your role is not to sit in an ivory tower and spit out genius product ideas, but to facilitate a process where the best ideas can surface, be stress-tested, and refined. The truth is, great ideas can (and should) come from anywhere.

If you believe the myth that you personally must be the source of every big idea, two bad things happen. First, it puts enormous pressure on you (unrealistic and unnecessary). Second, it alienates your team – nobody likes the PM who disregards everyone else’s input because “I know best.” I’ve seen PMs who ignored ideas from their engineers or designers, only to later realize those ideas were gold (oops). Conversely, I’ve seen teams flourish when the PM actively empowers others to contribute creatively. People take more ownership and pride when they see their input shape the product.

What to Do Instead: Cultivate an idea meritocracy. Make it easy for ideas to flow from any corner of the team (or even outside the team – from customers, partners, etc.). Create channels for idea sharing: an open Slack channel for product suggestions, a monthly brainstorming workshop, hackathon days, or an internal idea portal. Encourage your engineers, designers, data analysts, customer support – everyone – to speak up when they see an opportunity or a problem worth solving. And when they do, listen. Your job is often to play editor or curator of ideas, not sole author.

When someone brings an idea, don’t dismiss it – discuss it. Ask questions to understand and probe the idea’s merits. It’s fine to be skeptical (part of your role is to filter and prioritize, since not every idea will align with strategy or be feasible now), but create psychological safety so people know they can suggest things without feeling dumb. Remember Google’s Project Aristotle findings: teams are most effective when members feel safe to take risks and voice opinions psychsafety.com. That applies here – if folks fear the PM’s ego, they’ll stop sharing ideas.

Another practical tip: consider forming a mini “braintrust” for your product. This could be a group of trusted colleagues (maybe a design lead, a lead engineer, etc.) who regularly review early concepts and give candid feedback. Set ground rules that it’s about making the product better, not about whose idea it was. Check your ego at the door – be ready to have your pet idea torn apart if it’s flawed. It’s better to find out early and adjust than to bulldoze your idea through and have it fail with users later.

Finally, give credit where it’s due. If an engineer’s suggestion turns into a hit feature, shine a spotlight on that. By celebrating team-sourced ideas, you reinforce the virtuous cycle. Over time, you’ll find your team is a rich engine of innovation, and your role as PM is to steer and shape that collective creativity into product wins. It’s incredibly rewarding to see ideas you facilitated (even if you didn’t originate them) make a difference for users. In product management, the only thing that matters is building the right product, not getting personal credit for who thought of it. Remember that, and you’ll go far.

Myth 6: The Product Manager’s Job is Done at Launch

Why This Myth Is Tempting: Shipping a product or a big new feature is often seen as the finish line. We even use terms like “product launch” or “go-live” that imply a grand finale. There’s a huge build-up: months of work, countless meetings, late nights, QA crunch time, and finally you hit that big red Launch button (or more likely, flip the feature flag) – huzzah! It’s live! It’s easy to feel like that’s the climax of the story. Many teams celebrate launches like achievements (which they are, to be clear). After all that stress, who wouldn’t want to breathe a sigh of relief and say, “We did it, we’re done!” This mindset can trick you into thinking the PM’s main duty was getting the product out the door, and now it’s time to hand things off and move on to the next project.

Reality Check: The launch is just the beginning of your product’s journey, not the end. In many ways, the real work of product management starts after launch. Before launch, everything is based on hypotheses and assumptions – you think feature X will solve problem Y and deliver value Z, but it isn’t proven until users actually use it. The moment your product hits the real world, you finally get to find out if those hypotheses hold water. Eric Ries’s Lean Startup framework famously describes the Build-Measure-Learn loop userpilot.com: you build something, measure how it performs in the market, and learn from that data to inform what to build next. The launch enables the measure & learn parts of that cycle. In other words, launch is the starting line for iteration, not the finish line of iteration.

Consider this: you launch V1. What are users doing with it? Are they delighted and sticking around, or are they confused and bouncing? Which features are used heavily, and which hardly at all? Did your new onboarding flow actually improve conversion rates? Are there bugs or UX friction points lighting up your support lines? Post-launch, a PM should be knee-deep in analytics dashboards, user feedback forums, app store reviews-anywhere you can gather insight on the product’s performance. You should almost immediately be forming hypotheses for improvements (“Hm, users are dropping off at step 3 of the signup, maybe we need to simplify that step or better communicate the value earlier”).

Also, no product survives first contact with users fully intact. You will have misjudged something. That’s normal. The key is to quickly identify where the product isn’t hitting the mark and course-correct. Agile teams usually plan for a continuous stream of post-launch iterations (V1.1, V1.2, etc.) to respond to what they learn. If you treat launch as “done and dusted,” you risk letting your product stagnate or fail to address issues that only became visible once real users showed up.

Moreover, in today’s SaaS world, a product is a living thing. Even if your launch went great, user needs evolve, competitors react, technology changes. You have to keep iterating to remain valuable. The concept of Product/Market Fit isn’t a one-time achievement; it needs maintenance.

What to Do Instead: Plan for post-launch from the start. Before you launch, define what success looks like in measurable terms. Identify key metrics/KPIs you’ll track (e.g., Day-1 and Day-7 retention, conversion rate, NPS, error rate, etc., depending on your product). Set up analytics and dashboards ahead of time so you can immediately collect data. Also set up feedback channels: maybe an in-app survey, or prepare your customer support team to gather feedback, or schedule user testing sessions shortly after launch. Essentially, be ready to listen and observe intensively as soon as you launch.

Have a hypothesis backlog: chances are, during development you already thought of features you wanted to include but cut, or alternate ideas you weren’t sure about. Post-launch is the time to test and refine those. Organize a “launch retrospective” with your team after a week or two of data – what’s working, what’s not? Encourage everyone to share observations from their vantage point (devs might notice errors, designers see usability issues, sales hear prospect reactions, etc.).

Also, communicate to stakeholders that launch is phase 1. Sometimes executives or sales teams think a launch means “we’re done, move the team elsewhere.” Educate them that you’ve launched an experiment and now need to nurture it. If you set expectations upfront that a second wave of improvements will follow based on actual usage, stakeholders will be more patient and supportive of further changes.

Finally, celebrate the launch (you all earned it!) but treat it as a milestone, not a tombstone. The product isn’t dead now that it’s launched; it’s alive and kicking! In fact, sometimes you might downplay an initial launch as a “soft launch” or “beta” specifically to signal that you’re still learning and tweaking. Keep that mindset of continuous improvement. Your product (and users) will thank you for it.

Myth 7: Product Managers Write Detailed Specifications for Everything

Why This Myth Is Tempting: In the old days of software development (think waterfall methodology), it was common for a product manager (or a business analyst) to write a massive Product Requirements Document (PRD) – dozens if not hundreds of pages detailing every nook and cranny of the product before a single line of code was written. Some folks who have been around long enough still tell war stories of 200-page spec documents. The legacy of that era is the belief that a PM’s primary output is documentation: wireframes for every screen, acceptance criteria for every user story, exhaustive specs describing exactly how features should work. It can feel like if you didn’t document it, it won’t happen (and conversely, if you did document it, your job is done). For organizations transitioning from project to product mindsets, there may even be stakeholder pressure: “Where’s the big spec doc? We need it to sign off the project!” Thus, PMs might think churning out detailed specs equals doing the job right.

Reality Check: Modern product development, especially with Agile methods, values conversation and iteration over extensive documentation. In fact, one of the core values of the Agile Manifesto is “working software over comprehensive documentation” agilemanifesto.org. This doesn’t mean “no documentation whatsoever” – it means we prefer lightweight artifacts and direct team collaboration to achieve clarity, rather than relying on a tome of written instructions that is often obsolete the moment it’s finished. Why the shift? Because in a fast-moving environment, learning and change are constant. If you spend 3 months writing a detailed spec, by the time engineering builds it (another few months) and you finally get feedback, you might realize half the spec was wrong about what users needed. Rigid specs can become a ball and chain.

Also, detailed specs can give a false sense of security. It’s easy to think, “It’s all in the PRD, so everything will go perfectly.” Reality: questions will still arise, and things will change. Over-documenting can even reduce team ownership – developers and designers might disengage their creativity if they feel everything’s been pre-decided. Agile teams instead use user stories, sketches, prototypes, and lots of real-time conversations to flesh out details just-in-time. The emphasis is on a shared understanding within the team rather than a static document. Agile guru Jeff Patton often says it’s about the conversation and discovery, not just the written story. A good user story is a placeholder for a conversation with the team, ensuring everyone understands the intent and can collaborate on the best solution.

Now, to be clear, some documentation is usually needed. It’s not that a PM should never write things down. It’s about finding the balance. Write enough that the team has clarity on the problem to solve, the scope, the constraints, and any critical requirements (especially things like compliance or performance needs). But don’t try to pre-spec every dropdown and pixel – let the specialists (designers, engineers) work those out, through dialogue and iteration with you. Not only does this save time, it also leverages the whole team’s brainpower.

What to Do Instead: Embrace “lightweight” documentation and continuous communication. For example, instead of a huge PRD, you might maintain a living backlog of user stories or jobs-to-be-done. Each story focuses on the user’s need and context, not prescriptive implementation. Augment these with acceptance criteria that clarify the intent (“User should be able to do X so that Y result is achieved”). Use visual aids like wireframes or mockups for clarity, but consider them conversation starters, not final blueprints. A high-fidelity prototype can often convey a feature’s behavior better than a 10-page written description – and it’s easier to tweak when things change.

Work closely with your designers and engineers in the design phase. Maybe do a user story mapping session together to outline the flow. Invite questions and collaboratively decide details. You’ll find that when engineers and designers understand the why behind a feature deeply, they can often make on-the-fly decisions that align with the product vision without needing every detail written down. This also increases their engagement and sense of ownership. They’re not just coders following a spec; they’re partners in finding the best solution.

Keep documentation lean and useful. If you write something, ask yourself: who is this for, and will they actually use it? If it’s for QA or future maintenance, perhaps a concise wiki page of “feature specs” is enough. If it’s for legal sign-off, maybe just a checklist of compliance points. Avoid writing novels that nobody reads.

Finally, communicate, communicate, communicate. The most efficient path to clarity is usually having a quick face-to-face (or Zoom) discussion with the team. Don’t rely on Confluence pages alone. As the Agile principle says, “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.” That might sound ironic coming from a writing-heavy answer like this one, but hey, after you read this, go talk to your team!

In summary: be clear, be concise, and favor real-time collaboration over static paperwork. Your goal is to ensure everyone understands the vision and the constraints – how they document that understanding can vary. A shared whiteboard sketch and a few bullet points can sometimes serve better than a 50-page spec. And when something inevitably changes or is learned mid-implementation, update and adapt with minimal friction. Your mantra: clarity through collaboration over comprehensiveness through documentation.

Myth 8: More Features = Better Product

Why This Myth Is Tempting: We live in a feature-driven culture. It’s common to see products compared in a checklist manner: “Our software has 30 features, whereas Competitor X has only 20 – therefore ours is superior!” Customers sometimes fuel this by asking, “Does your product do X? No? Okay, then we might go with a different solution that does.” It’s easy for product teams (and especially sales teams) to fall into a mentality of feature arms racing – building feature after feature to catch up or outdo rivals, or to satisfy that one big client’s every whim. On the surface, adding features seems directly correlated with adding value: more capability, more use cases covered, more reasons someone might choose your product. Product managers might also feel a sense of accomplishment and justification by delivering lots of features (“look at all the stuff we built this quarter!”). Thus, it’s tempting to equate quantity of features with quality of product.

Reality Check: More features often means more complexity, more maintenance cost, and often more confusion for users. There’s a term for a product that keeps accumulating features endlessly: feature bloat. It’s like a kitchen knife that also has a spoon, fork, corkscrew, screwdriver, nail file, and flashlight attached. Sure, it can do a lot, but as a result it’s unwieldy and not great at its core job of cutting. Software is similar – every new feature potentially adds complexity to the UI, cognitive load for users, potential bugs, and increased burden on engineering and support. If those features aren’t highly valuable, they may hurt more than they help.

There’s data to back this caution. An industry report by Pendo found that ~80% of features in the average software product are rarely or never used pendo.io. Read that again: eighty percent! Imagine spending time and money building 10 features, and 8 of them basically collect dust. That’s a staggering amount of wasted effort and potentially a lot of clutter in your product. (To be fair, some features are niche but critical for certain users, so usage alone isn’t everything – but 80% unused is a big red flag). Another source, the Standish Group, famously found that about 64% of features in products are “rarely or never” used. This doesn’t mean those features had zero users, but their value was marginal. Meanwhile, those unused features still have to be supported, possibly localized into other languages, considered when redesigning UI, etc. They carry hidden costs.

It’s often better to be a master of a few things than mediocre at many. Think of successful products you love – I bet they are usually simple or at least focused on what they do. Or if they’re broad (like an Excel or Photoshop), they likely evolved over decades with extreme care to integration – and even those have tons of barely used features (cue jokes about the 90% of Excel users who have never used a pivot table).

Adding features to chase competitors is also often a losing game. If you’re always reacting to what others have, you’re not playing your game. Plus, a checkbox comparison might win a sale, but it doesn’t ensure retention. A user might say “We need these 10 features,” but if they log in and find an overcomplicated product with those 10 features, they’ll get frustrated. Many enterprise software companies have learned this the hard way – winning deals with a laundry list of features, but then customers don’t actually adopt the software because it’s too complex.

To be clear, features are the tools by which we deliver value – we can’t have a product with zero features (that’s called a slide deck 😜). The key is selectivity and focus. Each feature should earn its place by significantly moving a needle: improving conversion, saving user time, enabling a new valuable capability that lots of users will use, etc. If a feature is “nice to have” or only one client out of 100 will use it, think twice. Sometimes the answer is not building the feature but providing a workaround or a plugin or saying no.

There’s a famous quote often attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” In product terms, a great product often simplifies life for the user, and that sometimes means saying no to feature requests to keep the experience clean and focused.

What to Do Instead: Be ruthless in prioritization. Develop a clear framework for evaluating potential features. For example, assess each idea by the user value it delivers, how it aligns with your product vision, and the impact vs. effort. Does this feature solve a real, pressing problem for a significant chunk of your users or a strategically important segment? Will it move key metrics (engagement, revenue, NPS)? If the answer is “eh, not really, but a couple people asked for it,” then be very cautious. It might belong on the “not now” list.

Learn to say “no” or “not yet” diplomatically. A big part of a PM’s job is protecting the product from feature creep. When stakeholders or customers request things that don’t fit, explain your reasoning: “We’re focusing on making sure we nail the core use cases and keep the product easy to use. If we add too many options now, it could hurt all users. Let’s revisit this when we see broader demand.” Often customers appreciate that you’re thinking about the overall quality of the product experience (and if it’s a must-have for them, maybe they’re not the right customer for you – which is a hard pill but sometimes true).

You should also continuously monitor usage of what you’ve built. If certain features are consistently underused, dig in and find out why. Is it because they’re well hidden (and should be surfaced), or because they’re actually not that needed? In some cases, consider removing or sunsetting features. It’s rare, but cleaning out the closet can be healthy. At minimum, don’t keep investing in features that evidence shows aren’t delivering value.

Adopt a mindset of “maximize outcome, not output.” This ties into the outcome-based roadmap idea (coming up in Myth 9). Your goal is not to ship 50 features a year; your goal is to, say, increase customer satisfaction by 20%, or double active usage, or achieve some outcome. If you can do that with 5 killer features instead of 15 mediocre ones, do it with 5. Users don’t count features; they count results and experiences.

Lastly, ensure your product’s core value is front and center and excellent. If you ever feel your product is getting too complex, step back and think: “If I were re-launching a simpler v2 of this product, which features would be the must-haves?” Sometimes rebooting that mentality helps refocus on what truly matters to customers.

In summary: Great products often have a strong point of view and edit themselves well. Be the editor. Don’t let your product become the Swiss Army knife that’s rarely used; make it the sharp, dependable tool that users love every day.

Myth 9: A Product Roadmap is a Fixed Plan

Why This Myth Is Tempting: Executives and stakeholders love roadmaps. They’re often asking for them: “Show me the product roadmap for the next 12-18 months.” It can feel like the roadmap is a promise or a contract – we commit now to deliver Feature A in Q1, Feature B in Q2, etc. In many organizations, especially those used to big upfront planning, the roadmap is drawn as a Gantt chart with specific features on specific dates stretching far into the future. This gives a comforting sense of certainty: everyone knows what’s coming and when. It’s tempting for product managers too, because it turns the ambiguous swirl of possibilities into a neat, tidy schedule. Once you publish that roadmap, you might feel you must stick to it “or else.” Plus, without a fixed plan, how will sales sell future capabilities? How will marketing plan launches? So the myth perpetuates that a roadmap is etched in stone, and deviating from it is a failure.

Reality Check: A product roadmap is not a legal contract; it’s a living document that outlines your best guess at how to achieve your strategy given what you know today. The further out in time you go, the fuzzier it should be. Why? Because product development operates in an environment of uncertainty. Market conditions change, customer needs evolve, your understanding deepens, and unexpected opportunities or challenges arise. If you rigidly stick to a year-long feature plan made six months ago, you might miss the fact that by Q3, half of those features are either no longer as important or need to be reimagined. A roadmap that is treated as fixed often leads to building the wrong things (because you promised them long ago) or under-delivering (because reality proved the plan infeasible or off-target).

Modern best practice is moving towards outcome-driven roadmaps or theme-based roadmaps, rather than a list of features with dates. For example, instead of saying “Q2: Build Feature X,” an outcome-based roadmap might say “Q2 Objective: Increase new user activation by 20%.” That leaves flexibility for the team to figure out how to get that outcome (maybe by building an onboarding tutorial, or maybe by simplifying sign-up – the solution can be decided closer to the date based on evidence). As product discovery coach Teresa Torres and others advocate, this keeps teams focused on the problems to solve, not just a predetermined output. It acknowledges the “cone of uncertainty” – things in the near term can be more specific, but further out, you should intentionally keep it high-level. Google’s Project Aristotle insight about psychological safety also ties in here: if teams feel safe, they can admit when a plan needs to change without fear, rather than hiding problems to meet a doomed commitment.

To be clear, having a plan is important. We’re not saying “wing it entirely.” But the plan must be able to flex. A roadmap should be a tool for communication of direction and priorities, not a strict timeline that you follow blindly. Some companies even stopped using dates on roadmaps, using buckets like “Now / Next / Later” or timeframes like “H1 2025 (tentative)” to signal that things are subject to change. The key is setting expectations with stakeholders that change isn’t failure – it’s expected learning.

If you treat the roadmap as fixed and never update it, one of two things usually happens: (1) You deliver everything “on time” but half of it doesn’t actually move the needle (yay, we perfectly executed a bad plan), or (2) you inevitably slip on some items (due to new findings or mis-estimation) and then everyone panics or gets upset (“but you promised Q3!”). Both scenarios are not great. Far better is a culture where roadmaps are transparent about uncertainty and adapt based on continuous discovery and feedback.

What to Do Instead: Shift the conversation from features & dates to outcomes & priorities. When presenting a roadmap, frame it as, “Here’s our current game plan, which we will adjust as we learn.” If you can, use outcome language: e.g., Q1 focus on “Improve search experience to increase engagement,” Q2 focus on “Expand to new platform (mobile) to reach new users,” etc., with the specifics of features as sub-bullets or examples. This signals that the goal is fixed (well, relatively fixed) but the means can change. Some orgs do “theme-based” roadmaps with high-level themes per quarter and a few candidate initiatives under each theme, but no guarantee which will happen until closer in.

Educate your stakeholders gently. You might say: “A year-long fixed roadmap in software is like mapping a route through a jungle that’s constantly changing. We’ll map a general direction, but we need the ability to navigate around new obstacles or go towards newly discovered opportunities.” Use analogies stakeholders understand. Or cite industry research: for instance, McKinsey or other studies on agility emphasize the importance of adaptability and that static multi-year plans often fail to capture value producttalk.org (the evidence is that companies with more flexible planning are more successful in tech).

Also, update the roadmap regularly. Treat it as a living document that you revisit perhaps every month or at least quarterly. If something big was learned that affects priorities, adjust the roadmap and communicate why. Stakeholders generally handle changes well if you give them context: “User testing showed that our planned Feature B won’t actually solve the problem, so we’re rethinking it – that’s why it’s moved from Q2 to TBD. In its place, we’re focusing on an alternative that early signs show will be more effective.” This kind of transparency builds trust.

Keep the level of detail appropriate to the audience and timeframe. For near-term (say next 1-2 sprints), specifics are fine. For mid-term (next quarter or two), talk in epics or major stories. For beyond that, stick to themes or outcomes. If someone asks for exact dates a year out, you can politely push back: “Given the pace of change, any exact dates that far out would be a guess. Let’s talk about the priority and we’ll detail it when we’re closer.”

Internally with your team, you might maintain a more detailed backlog or plan, but even that you should be willing to change as you validate assumptions. The team culture should celebrate responding to new information as a strength, not a weakness.

In summary, treat your roadmap as a compass, not a contract. It tells you the direction and maybe some key landmarks on the journey, but if a road washes out or you discover a shortcut, you alter the route. The end destination (the outcome) stays in focus, but the path is adaptable. When you achieve that mental shift, roadmaps become a powerful tool for alignment and strategy, rather than a source of stress or a rigid cage.

Myth 10: Product Managers are the Sole Decision-Makers

Why This Myth Is Tempting: As a product manager, you’re often called the “decision maker” for the product – you prioritize the backlog, you approve designs, you sign off releases. The team looks to you for guidance on tough calls. And indeed, PMs do have to make a lot of decisions, big and small. This can feed the myth that all decisions about the product are yours to make, and that a good PM is one who personally figures everything out and tells everyone what to do. People might imagine the PM as a sort of benevolent dictator: taking input from others, yes, but ultimately overruling any dissent when deciding on features, design, pricing, strategy – you name it. Some PMs themselves fall into this mindset, especially if pressed by time – it’s often “faster” to just decide something unilaterally than to involve a bunch of folks. Plus, the PM bears a lot of responsibility, so it’s easy to feel, “Well, if I’m on the hook, I should be the one calling the shots.” This myth aligns with a top-down leadership style that many industries historically had (“the boss knows best”).

Reality Check: While a product manager often has the final say on many product decisions, the best decisions are typically a team effort. If you find yourself making every decision in a vacuum, something’s wrong. You either have a team that’s disengaged, or you’re not leveraging their expertise, or you’ve fostered a culture where others are afraid to voice opinions. None of those are healthy. In truth, a PM’s role in decision-making is usually to facilitate the process, incorporate diverse perspectives, apply judgement, and yes, sometimes be the tie-breaker. But that final decision should be well-informed by the team’s collective knowledge.

Consider the different experts on a typical product team: UX designers have deep knowledge of user behavior and interaction design principles; engineers know what’s technically feasible or easier vs harder to implement; data analysts can provide evidence of what users are actually doing in the product; QA might foresee edge cases. Also stakeholders like sales or marketing can share market context. If the PM ignores all that and just dictates, you’re almost certainly missing something. You might push a design that looks great on paper but engineering knows will take 6 months (when a simpler alternative could be done in 6 weeks). Or you might insist on a certain UX flow that a designer could have improved upon if you gave them more ownership.

Moreover, effective teams rely on psychological safety and trust. Google’s Project Aristotle study on team effectiveness famously found that the number one factor for successful teams was psychological safety – a climate where everyone feels safe to speak up, admit mistakes, and contribute ideas psychsafety.com. In a practical sense, this means encouraging open debate and input on decisions. It means sometimes the PM’s idea will be wrong and an engineer’s idea is better – and that should be embraced, not suppressed.

Another aspect: being the sole decision-maker is not scalable. As your product and team grow, you simply can’t make every call. You need to delegate and empower others. A junior PM often evolves by learning to step back from micromanaging decisions to enabling the team to decide many things on their own. You want a team of owners, not a team of order-followers waiting for your nod on every trivial thing.

What to Do Instead: View yourself as a decision facilitator and enabler. Your responsibility is to ensure good decisions are made, not necessarily to make all the decisions yourself. This means bringing the right people into the discussion, asking the right questions, and driving toward clarity. Use frameworks when appropriate – for instance, a simple pros/cons list discussion, or a RICE score for prioritization, or a DACI/RACI model to clarify who is Driver, Approver, Contributors, Informed in a decision. Often, you as PM might be the “approver,” but make sure to have contributors weigh in.

Foster a team culture where everyone’s perspective is valued. In sprint planning or backlog grooming, encourage engineers and designers to voice concerns or alternatives. In design reviews, let engineers and PMs ask questions to the designer. Create an environment where the best idea wins, regardless of who it comes from. I’ve had meetings where a junior developer asked a question that completely reframed our approach – imagine if they hadn’t felt safe to speak up!

That said, don’t swing to analysis paralysis. Collaborative decision-making doesn’t mean decision by committee on everything. It’s about input and discussion, then someone needs to synthesize and decide. Often that someone is you, the PM – and that’s fine. Make the call once you’ve heard the voices and weighed the options. And when you do, explain the reasoning so it’s a learning moment for all (“We’re going with Option B because while Option A had a better UX, the engineering effort is triple, meaning we’d delay the launch by 2 months which we can’t afford. It’s a tough trade-off but time-to-market is more critical here.”). This way even those who disagreed understand why and feel heard.

Also, empower decisions at the right levels. For example, you might let the design lead decide on the color scheme without you. Or let engineering decide the implementation details entirely (as long as the user outcome is met). Pick your battles – focus your decision-making energy on things that significantly impact the user or strategy, and trust the team on more granular choices. A sign of a healthy team is when decisions are made without the PM, and the PM is okay with it because the team is aligned on goals and principles.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to admit when you’re wrong or when new data changes a past decision. That humility actually builds credibility. It shows you’re objective and focused on what’s right for the product, not just on being right. It also further encourages team members to speak up when they think something could be better.

In conclusion, a product manager is a bit like a team coach. The coach doesn’t score the goals themselves, but they orchestrate the play. Sometimes they call the shot for a critical play (decision) based on all the input from their players and their own view of the field. But they also heavily rely on the players to execute and to provide feedback (“coach, I’m noticing the opponent’s weak on the left side…”). By guiding the team to great decisions rather than dictating, you’ll likely make better decisions overall – and have a team that’s motivated and innovative.

Conclusion: Embracing the Reality

Product management is a complex, challenging, and deeply rewarding discipline – but only if you shed the misleading fantasies and embrace the real fundamentals of the role. It’s not about being a mini-CEO with unilateral power, or about having an engineering PhD, or writing encyclopedic specs, or relentlessly pumping out features. It is about influence without authority, about empathy for users, about communication and collaboration, and about a laser focus on outcomes and value.

By debunking these ten myths, we pull product management out of the hype cloud and into the real world of how great products actually get made. It’s rarely a lone hero PM making genius pronouncements. It’s usually a diverse team working in concert, guided by a PM who empowers them, keeps them aligned on a compelling vision, and constantly learns and adapts.

So if you’re a new or aspiring product manager, take heart: you don’t need to be a unicorn magician. You need to be a team player, a curious learner, a decision facilitator, and an advocate for the user. If you’re a veteran PM, it’s always good to check that none of these myths have silently crept into your habits – we all need a reality check sometimes (I know I’ve been guilty of a few of these in moments of stress!).

When you let go of the myths, you make room to truly excel at the craft of product management. You’ll set better expectations, make smarter decisions, and build stronger relationships with your team and customers. And guess what? That’s when the real magic happens – not the hype, but the genuine article: teams empowered to do their best work, and products that genuinely delight users and drive business success.

Now, step off the throne, ditch the myths, grab that conductor’s baton, and go build something amazing – together with your team.