# Product Management Archetype Mapping

> A framework for auditing team composition and hiring based on five distinct PM archetypes. Use it when identifying talent gaps in your organization, designing the "Avengers" super-team, or aligning a PM's natural strengths with the specific needs of a business unit.

- Skill: `samarv/product-management-archetype-mapping` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add samarv/product-management-archetype-mapping`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/samarv/product-management-archetype-mapping/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: samarv (https://skillmd.com/u/samarv)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/samarv/product-management-archetype-mapping

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# Product Management Archetype Mapping

Build a high-performance product organization by intentionally hiring for "spikes" in specific disciplines rather than looking for generic generalists. By balancing these five archetypes, you create a healthy tension between craft, growth, and business sustainability.

## The Five PM Archetypes

Every PM has a **primary** archetype (their natural wiring) and a **secondary** archetype (their balancing skill).

### 1. The Consumer PM
*   **Persona:** Half-designer, half-product person.
*   **Focus:** Detail, delight, and craft.
*   **Trigger:** Use when the product requires high emotional resonance or "vibe" (e.g., Instagram filters, ChatGPT UI).
*   **Key Behavior:** Obsessing over being "three pixels off" or simplifying complex flows.

### 2. The Growth PM
*   **Persona:** Half-data scientist, half-product person.
*   **Focus:** Skepticism, experimentation, and rigorous logging.
*   **Trigger:** Use when you need to turn a working product into a rigorous, scalable system (the "1 to 10" phase).
*   **Key Behavior:** Asking "Why is this happening?" and demanding data to prove a hypothesis before shipping.

### 3. The Business/GM PM
*   **Persona:** Half-MBA, half-product person.
*   **Focus:** Margins, incentives, and marketplace dynamics.
*   **Trigger:** Use for products where the business model is the product (e.g., Uber pricing, marketplace supply/demand).
*   **Key Behavior:** Analyzing where value is created and how pricing affects ecosystem behavior.

### 4. The Platform PM
*   **Persona:** System builder.
*   **Focus:** Internal leverage and building tools for others.
*   **Trigger:** Use when building internal messaging systems, API layers, or infrastructure that allows the rest of the team to move faster.
*   **Key Behavior:** Abstracting complex operations (like airport pickups) into scalable, configurable venues.

### 5. The Research/AI PM (Model Designer)
*   **Persona:** Technical depth + product taste.
*   **Focus:** Shaping model behavior and post-training.
*   **Trigger:** Use when working directly with researchers to fine-tune AI models so the "vibe" of the model output matches the product's intent.
*   **Key Behavior:** Acting as the bridge between raw research intelligence and human-usable ergonomics.

## How to Audit and Build the Team

1.  **Map the Current Inventory**: List every PM in your org. Identify their primary and secondary archetypes.
2.  **Identify the Missing Spike**: Determine what the business currently lacks. If you have great growth but the brand feels "cheap," you are missing a Consumer PM. If you have a beautiful product that no one uses, you are missing a Growth PM.
3.  **Engineer Healthy Tension**: Intentionally pair opposites.
    *   Pair a **Consumer PM** (protects the craft) with a **Growth PM** (moves the numbers).
    *   Pair a **Business PM** (optimizes margins) with a **Platform PM** (builds the sustainable infrastructure to support those margins).
4.  **Hire for the "Spike"**: Stop hiring "well-rounded" candidates who are average at everything. Hire the person whose "slider" is at 100% for the specific archetype you are missing.

## Examples

**Example 1: Balancing Uber's Marketplace**
*   **Context**: Uber needed to solve the "peace of mind" problem for riders going to the airport.
*   **Application**: Pair a **Business PM** to calculate the incentive needed for drivers to show up at 4:00 AM with a **Consumer PM** to design the "peace of mind" UI (e.g., warnings like "This pick-up time is cutting it close").
*   **Output**: Uber Reserve, a $5B+ high-margin business.

**Example 2: Designing ChatGPT's Personality**
*   **Context**: OpenAI needed the model to feel intuitive and helpful, not just smart.
*   **Application**: Created a specific **Research/AI PM** role (Model Designer) for a person with extreme technical depth and high product taste.
*   **Output**: A model that has a specific, consistent "vibe" and user-centric behavior beyond raw intelligence.

## Common Pitfalls

*   **Hiring generalists for specialists' problems**: If you hire a generic PM for a Research/AI role, they won't have the technical depth to tell the researchers what to do in six months.
*   **Misaligning Archetype to Market**: Putting a high-craft **Consumer PM** into a heavily regulated, boring, or back-end industry where they will become frustrated by the lack of "pixel-polishing" opportunities.
*   **Fearing Conflict**: Assuming the debate between a Growth PM (who wants to test everything) and a Consumer PM (who wants a consistent vision) is a problem. This tension is the primary source of high-quality products.
*   **Ignoring the Platform PM**: Neglecting the tool-builder archetype until your codebase becomes "spaghetti," slowing down the entire organization.