Do you have product manager? Or a backlog manager?

​Most companies that come to us say they need help building a product. When we look at how they work, what they actually have is someone managing a backlog.

There's a simple test. Look at how decisions get made about what to build next. If the answer is "whatever the stakeholder asked for" or "the next thing on the list," nobody is deciding. Someone is executing. That's project management.

Product management involves user research, trade-offs, and the word "no." A lot of "no."

Why this kills products

A full backlog feels productive. There's always something to build. The team is never idle. But it means nobody is making decisions. Every request gets added. Nothing gets removed.

Engineers build features that never get used. Designers solve problems that don't exist. Over time, the team stops caring about what they're building because it doesn't seem to matter.

A good product manager keeps the backlog short because they've done the hard work of deciding what not to build.

Why this matters when you hire external teams

When companies hire an external team, they usually treat it as a project. Here's the scope, here's the deadline, go.

That works if you know exactly what to build. Most companies don't.

What they need is a team that pushes back. That says "we looked at this and we think you should do something different." At Miyagami, every team includes a product manager alongside the designer and engineer from day one. Their job is making sure we're building the right thing before we start building it fast.

Three questions to ask yourself

Who decides what you don't build? If nobody, you have a backlog manager.

When was the last time you killed a feature mid-sprint? If never, you're executing a plan instead of building a product.

Does your team talk to users directly? If all feedback flows through stakeholders, you're building what the organisation thinks users want. Not what they actually need.

If you answered "nobody," "never," and "no" to those three questions, adding product management will feel like slowing down. It is. But it's the difference between running fast in a straight line and running fast in circles.