Lore

Outbound PM / Inbound PM Split

An organizational pattern, roughly 30 years old per Cagan, that split product management responsibilities into two streams: outbound (market-facing — positioning, launch, sales enablement), which evolved into today's product marketing function, and inbound (product-facing — discovery, roadmap, requirements), which became modern product management.

Cagan cites this split as the historical root of confusion between product management and product marketing: a role that drifts toward market-facing work is reverting to the old 'outbound' half, not doing product management as currently defined. Related to Doshi's PM Definition: Define the Product, Orchestrate for Success.

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Use this mapping to clarify role boundaries when a PM role has drifted toward marketing-facing responsibilities — the confusion isn't new, it's a 30-year-old split re-emerging.