Should a Product Manager do coding?

The infamous myth busted

just for fun .. PC: Social Stories by Product Coalition

Ok .. coming back to the topic. Should a Product Manager do coding?

Let’s not beat around the bush. Let’s get straight to the point.

Yes, Product managers should do coding if the need is. Product managers who work on technical products define high-level requirements on what they want, but as a PM digs more into the technicalities of the product, the requirements do evolve or change sometimes. PMs usually rely on developers to tell them more details about the evolving requirements.

Developers do a SPIKE on uncertain requirements, and help PM solidify the requirements.

Spike: The developers do a spike on the uncertain requirements, more like a research effort, and help the PM with solidifying the uncertain requirements.

Can PMs do the Spike? Yes, Technical PMs can do the spike themselves and figure out more solid requirements without developers’ help. The counter-argument immediately will be —

“the PMs won't have enough time to figure out customers’ requirements if they do hands-on coding”

My argument is — Well, customer research doesn't take 2 or 3 months time. We learn more about the customers as we implement and launch something. So spending all the time on…