18. Why product managers are important?

Excerpt from another blog

"Good business analysis helps you make sure you build the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons. By focusing on an organization's business objectives, tracing those to a viable solution with the necessary set of features, and then tracing further to detailed requirements, Business Analysts ensure that the organization's efforts are focused on the right things (features and requirements) for the right reasons (business objectives). In this economy, no company has the luxury to "build one to throw away" or even "fix it in release two." We all have to get it right the first time, and that's exactly what business analysis lets you do."

Though what Mike states in above post is true that in hard economic times organization can't afford to build and ship the unwanted product, I could substitute the role of business analyst with a product manager in above excerpt . (Though, in a non-product based, custom IT department organization, business analysts do have to wear the hat of a product manager).

A skilled product manager is equipped with powers to filter incoming demands, translate them into detailed product requirements, prioritize them for upcoming releases, and align with organization's vision and objectives.

Additionally, this fuziness of roles between a product manager and business analysts in especially dominant in asian market even in product based companies.

From another post,

I’ll be brought into a company and they often don’t have product managers or user experience designers – they generally do have project managers, andmaybe some form of “business analyst,” and of course IT developers, and they all usually report into a CIO. Sometimes I even find that the company has been outsourcing “the website” to external agencies to design and run.

Compared to a inhouse/custom IT solution, a consumer product requires higher standard of user experience in terms of performance, availability and ressilience, and product management techniques need to be applied to make sure the software doesn't fail.