Have you ever told a relative what you do, only to receive a puzzled look? Product management, as a field, is new. Our parent’s generation didn’t even consider it. Your average non-techie has no idea what it is even about. 你是否曾经告诉过亲戚你所做的事情，却得到了困惑的表情？产品管理作为一个领域，是一个新领域。我们父辈那一代根本没有考虑过这一点。一般的非技术人员甚至不知道它是什么。
How did Product Management as a job come to be? Has it always been around, but in different forms? As product managers, it would be great to understand the history of our profession. Then, we could help answer these questions we commonly get at holiday dinner tables with relatives. 产品管理作为一项工作是如何产生的？它一直存在，但以不同的形式存在吗？作为产品经理，了解我们职业的历史会很棒。然后，我们可以帮助回答这些我们在节日与亲戚的餐桌上经常遇到的问题。
Yet, when I asked my Product Management friends about it a few years ago, no one had a clue. There is shockingly little known broadly about how Product Management came to be. 然而，当我几年前向我的产品管理朋友询问时，没有人有任何线索。令人震惊的是，人们对产品管理的起源知之甚少。
This set off my years-long obsession with the history of the profession. I thought it would be easy to find a coherent history. But, everything I have read has several obvious flaws and gaps. It seems like writers are rewriting the same bad base article over and over. 这引发了我多年来对该行业历史的痴迷。我认为找到一个连贯的历史是很容易的。但是，我读到的所有内容都有一些明显的缺陷和差距。似乎作家们一遍又一遍地重写同样糟糕的基础文章。
The apocryphal story is that it starts with, “brand men,” at Procter & Gamble. Neil McElroy, who never worked as a PM, is called the father of the profession. Excuse me, what? 杜撰的故事是从宝洁公司的“品牌男士”开始的。从未担任过产品经理的尼尔·麦克尔罗伊 (Neil McElroy) 被称为该行业之父。对不起，什么？
Are these articles written by PMs or content people? Brand men are not PMs. Plus, obviously PM-type people in consumer goods companies existed in companies hundreds of years before. So, that is just a horrible starting place that makes no sense. 这些文章是 PM 还是内容人员写的？品牌人不是产品经理。另外，显然，消费品公司中的 PM 类型的人早在数百年前就已经存在于公司中了。所以，这只是一个可怕的起点，毫无意义。
Toyota is also always thrown in there. Sure, the Toyota Product System and Kanban are interesting. But they have nothing to do with PM. 丰田也总是被扔在那里。当然，丰田产品系统和看板很有趣。但他们与总理无关。
Instead of rewriting the same garbage about consumer goods brand men, I have been reading through troves of different books and old articles to figure out the actual phases of PM’s progression. Now, I think I am about ready to share an interpretation. 我没有重写关于消费品品牌男士的同样的垃圾，而是通过阅读大量不同的书籍和旧文章来弄清楚 PM 发展的实际阶段。现在，我想我准备好分享一个解释了。
Strap in as we explore, “Product Management: A Brief History.” I promise my interpretation of the phases of PM’s history is quite different from what has been written before. Most people have not even broken out the last 5 phases I do, lumping them into one. 当我们探索“产品管理：简史”时，请系好安全带。我保证我对首相历史各个阶段的解释与以前所写的完全不同。大多数人甚至都没有分解出我所做的最后五个阶段，而是将它们归为一个。
If you want to get philosophical, the whole of human history is product management. The architects of the pyramids invented several new products, like the spiral ramps that allowed the teams of slave laborers to transport the enormous stone blocks. 如果你想了解哲学，整个人类历史就是产品管理。金字塔的建筑师发明了几种新产品，比如螺旋坡道，可以让奴隶工队运输巨大的石块。
The pyramid’s spiral ramp construction *method.* 金字塔的螺旋坡道建造方法。
That was 4,500 years ago. Before that, the architects of Stonehenge devised their own techniques to move 25 ton rocks 150 miles. 那是4500年前的事了。在此之前，巨石阵的建筑师们发明了自己的技术，可以将 25 吨的岩石移动 150 英里。
In some ways, the people calling the shots for the laborers at Stonehenge and Pyramids were like product managers. In similar ways, architects or project managers have existed across large projects for millenia. 在某些方面，为巨石阵和金字塔的工人发号施令的人就像产品经理一样。以类似的方式，建筑师或项目经理在大型项目中已经存在了数千年。
Generally, they were accountable to a king who ordered the construction, and they had to influence the actual builders to build the far out vision incrementally in the fashion they recommend. 一般来说，他们对下令建造的国王负责，并且他们必须影响实际的建造者，以他们推荐的方式逐步建造遥远的愿景。
This mirrors the life of a product manager. Accountable to the CEO, they have to influence the engineers on a course of incremental actions to reach the ultimate product vision. 这反映了产品经理的生活。他们对首席执行官负责，必须影响工程师采取一系列渐进的行动，以实现最终的产品愿景。
But these people went by other names. They did not develop software with the title product management. For this piece, I am focused on the history of folks who were known as product managers. That is, people developing technology products with the title product manager. 但这些人有不同的名字。他们没有开发标题为“产品管理”的软件。在这篇文章中，我重点关注那些被称为产品经理的人的历史。即具有产品经理头衔的开发技术产品的人。
To get there, first we have to make a pit stop in the realm of consumer goods. 为了实现这一目标，我们首先必须在消费品领域稍作停留。