Here is a question that has been troubling me for a bit.

If open source projects can be successful without product management support, does that mean product managers in general are really not adding that much value?

Product managers usually has two broad job requirements 1. outbound 2. inbound. Outbound product management responsibilities are focused on getting adoption and usage. In the case of open source project, there is no need fo PM’s because adoption is “voluntary” and marketing done by word of mouth leveraging sheer size of contributing coder base. Since private enterprises do not have this level of word of mouth critical mass, outbound PM’s still add value through traditional marketing activities. In this case, we are not going anywhere as long as some software remain “closed”

Inbound, on the other hand, is causing me some headaches. Inbound marketing is the process of working with users/customers to solicit feedback and prioritize feature improvements. In the open source world, certainly no one actually goes out, visits users, and proactively solicits feedback. For infrastructure software (Tomcat for example), the open source engineers themselves are “users” as well, so the feedback naturally comes from the community and a mostly consensus system prioritizes work schedules to prevent forking. Can this proces work in a commercial environment? Can a lead engineer simply solicit feedback online from paying customers and prioritize product roadmap through a open, transparent dialog with customers? Are the 2-3 PM’s on a particular product non-value add overhead?

Another wierd twist for me is open source enterprise applications. I used to think that the role of PM is way too important in the application world for open source to make head ways into the industry. The open source engineers simply do not have enough experience in . . . say supply chain. . . nor the time/motivation/access to end users to learn about it to successfully create open source supply chain management applications. While I’m not neccessarily proven wrong yet, but the rise of SugarCRM has me worried. SugarCRM is a private company too so they do bury some of the PM work in a for-profit organization. Thus, more worrisome are true open source enterprise applications without commercial support. If some of them are able to build a sustainable userbase, what does it mean for PM’s value add, can engineers just take over PM’s responsibilities?

I had a conversation with a Microsoft PM of an infrasture software once regarding the fact that his open source competitor has faster development cycles and better functionality. Not only was the open source project a “fast follower” (copy MSFT, just code faster) but it is now beating him in releasing next generation functionalities. Are the 4 product managers, 2 program managers, and 1 product planners on the team not only being out executed but out “planned” and out “strategized” by a bunch of hackers through a community system? Are all the market research, experience, and man hours dedicated by the PM team a waste?

This brings me back to Markowitz portfolio theory on the stock market. No one person can predict the future. The collective wisdom of the masses is usually right. The market is efficient. Buy index funds. Can open source out compete commercial software simply because it has more “brains” working and contributing to the direction of a project?

I dont know. The battle is far from over, so no conclusion can be drawn, but sure wish I know.