Product Management and Lifecycle
Question: "Does product management tend to the product throughout its entire lifecycle?"
No. This is yet another falsehood that is predicated on the CEO of the Product misconception. The program manager is primarily responsible for product lifecycle management.
Question:"The Product Owner is a role in Scrum that is a recent entry into the discipline of product management. Is this statement true?"
No. The product owner is a role in the Scrum lightweight software development method.
According to the Blackblot PMTK Methodology™, all and any roles in the solution space are unrelated to the product management domain.
Question:"What are typical product management best practices?"
Best practices are ways of performing business activities that over time have proven themselves to be successful, and these practices can be somewhat reliably replicated elsewhere.
At the methodology level, the Blackblot PMTK Methodology™ is an accepted best practice.
At the task level, typical product management best practices include the likes of roadmaps, product positioning, use cases, requirements management, market planning, etc'.
Question:"I read on Wikipedia that product management is supposedly a cross-functional leadership role. Is this correct?"
This is an incorrect notion that is predicated on the CEO of the Product misconception. The true cross-functional product leadership role is program management. Sometimes product managers are wrongly tasked with owning program management responsibilities – hence the confusion.
Question:"Do programmers make good product managers?"
It depends on the individual. If the person can break away from a possibly entrenched technical product-think mindset and adopt a customer oriented market-think approach then they will be fine as product managers.
Question:"What are some good online PRD samples, possibly of some known popular products?"
It is very difficult to find publicly available Product Requirement Document (PRD) samples because of non-disclosure and trade secrets issues. No company will willingly release any such documents. A Blackblot PMTK PRD template is available.
Question:"Does a product manager need to be a good coder too?"
While any supplemental skill could prove beneficial, the requirements for any role in product management do not require any coding skills at any level. It does not matter if the product is software or not.
Question:"Why would somebody want to leave Sales to join Product Management?"
This is really a question on why people leave sales. Sales can be a stressful, cynical and demoralizing activity. Rejection is the daily norm.
One must have the right personality and psychological makeup for sales. On the other hand sales can be very rewarding, exciting, and enjoyable to an extrovert/communicator.
Leaving sales is a very personal choice that has to do with not enjoying the "action" and thrill of the job any more.