We have this product manager who is essentially a mouthpiece for business. He doesn’t create stories. He doesn’t gather any requirements. He doesn’t really understand how the product works. The team is fine doing all these things themselves. But what’s irritating is that he appears once in a while with random requests. “Give me the documentation of this feature”. “Share the detailed notes of some meeting”. “Put together next few sprint backlog and share with me”. We are ok with him not doing anything. But instead of helping the team, he just gives us extra work. And I guess business is happy with him getting their things done. How to deal with such a person without being rude or getting into arguments? I wish I could subtly tell him to either do your work or mind your business. Tc : 300k
Ask PM what’s the business objective he/she trying to achieve with the request? If they can’t articulate the business objective, you have a reason to say I’ve this task X which is more important for business so I’ll focus on my task X vs your request. If PM provides the business objective which makes sense, support his request.
Ask him to route his requests through the manager, who should be able to tackle this.
I did meet a couple of those. I’ve heard some stories from friends too. I’d say gather the evidence of what you’ve done (to show that you are doing your work) and also get proofs for what he hasn’t done and talk to your manager, share the evidence, have him/her speak with his manager. You could also start communicating in the group email or something about the project status and cc’ing your manager to give more visibility
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I'm confused with "business is happy with him getting things done" part
I guess that's the part that tells us he is a good PM. PM works to keep business side happy, not engineering.
I meant in terms of personal relations. Shouldn’t have written “work done”. He is a contractor trying to become full time for sometime. I would doubt about the good pm part.