Not a controversial topic, but an interesting one persay because there really isn’t a straightforward answer. Ultimately the question to ask here is, who is leading your product? Is that you the CEO/Co-founder of the company? Or are you unable to do that for various reasons?

It quite the same as running a home renovation project in Singapore. Do you engage in various contractors separately to get your renovation done, or do you engage in an ID to project manage and get everything done for you? Because ultimately, the alignment, coordination and logistics around a home renovation project can be a nightmare and you need to be able to deal with the stress and make pragmatic decisions around it.

After all, what does a product manager really do? If you boil it down, it is to take the product vision, convert it into a strategy, gain alignment across all key stakeholders and work with design & engineering to execute. Sounds simple? Not really. A lot of time is spent on alignment of inputs, taking into considerations of all facets, mitigating all risks, then finally having engineering build.

There are no shortcuts. While execution is important, not having clear product direction and focus would ultimalely lead to failure.