One of the central reasons that companies hire a Product Manager is to make sure that they have someone who sets and drives the direction of the product. In a world where there is never enough time to implement all the ideas that come along for great new features, you need to choose the right ones to put your development dollars into, or there’s always that potential that your product will lose its competitive edge.

I believe that when defining a Product Manager’s role in setting the product direction, most companies mistakenly consider the focus of that role to be choosing capabilities, when in fact the best contribution of a Product Manager is to provide a structure and mechanism for selecting new features. It’s the team as a whole that chooses the features, with the Product Manager ensuring that it all happens on schedule, consistently, and completely. And happens again and again.

Setting the product direction may sound like a highly strategic and conceptual activity, with no clear standards in the industry, similar to the Product Road Map, whose definition is “all over the map.” If you want it to bear results, however, you need to turn it into a tactical and somewhat mechanical effort.

Read on for more discussion of how to construct the mechanism for setting the product direction at your company.