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Christopher Global

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Why Functional PM Roles Often Fail to Scale Products Successfully

Early in my consulting career, techies frequently asked how to go faster. Eventually, I realized they really wanted to speed up the process from inception to completion. They wanted to speed up the end-to-end process, not the development lifecycle.


Going faster involved cross-functional collaboration, which also meant you depended on another team to align with your priorities. Basically, they wanted to know how to speed up their dependencies to shorten the time to reach their goals.


As a leader with a goal, I'd guess you've hired enough technical people to support your daily tasks. Have you hired anyone with the right people and communication skills to support your strategy? That's the problem, but you already knew that. So, you hired a PM (or someone with that background) and stuck them in a technical role. Two swings and misses. Isn't scaling the product or business a strategic goal?


Functional PMs have limits. They know what they have to deal with on a daily basis, but rarely know the end-to-end of the business or product. Portfolio Project Managers have the same limitations in a product delivery environment. Who is the cross-functional expert?


Scaling requires at least one Strategic PM or Enterprise PM to manage the effort at a portfolio level. It takes a masterful leader who overcomes boundaries and collaborates fiercely. Try hiring someone with portfolio management experience if you're hiring by skill.


Getting to scale takes strategy, not day-to-day support.

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