Product Management
Colin Smillie is a Toronto-based technology executive and product leader with over 25 years of product management experience across mobile security, automotive digital transformation, and enterprise SaaS. He led the product strategy behind Autotrader Canada’s print-to-digital transition, growing it to 4 million monthly visitors and record revenue before its sale to Yellow Pages Group, and has built product disciplines inside organizations ranging from early-stage startups to national nonprofits.
Building products people love: bridging technology, strategy, and human needs.
Product management has been at the centre of my career for over two decades, from building mobile security products at Certicom through to leading national technology strategy at YMCA Canada. While my career has evolved into broader technology executive leadership, the product manager’s instinct remains at the core of how I approach every challenge: understand the customer, prioritize ruthlessly, ship and learn.
Why Does Product Management Matter for Technology Leaders?
Product management is the most misunderstood role in tech and often the most impactful. When done right, a PM is the translator who makes sure the entire company isn’t building something nobody wants. That’s not a small thing. It’s the difference between a product that changes behaviour and one that collects dust.
What makes PM electric is that you’re constantly navigating tension. Engineering wants to build it right, sales wants it yesterday, design wants it beautiful, and the customer just wants their problem solved. Your job is to hold all of that in your head and make a call. Often with incomplete information, always with real consequences. It’s equal parts chess match and jazz improvisation.
I’ve shipped products used by millions of Canadians and I’ve killed features that teams spent months building. Both took courage. The wins taught me about market timing and momentum; the failures taught me that being wrong quickly is infinitely better than being wrong slowly. Every product I’ve touched has reinforced the same truth: the companies that win are the ones where product management isn’t a title. It’s a discipline woven into how the entire organization thinks.
What Are the Key Principles of Great Product Management?
Customer Obsession
Every great product starts with a deep understanding of real people and real problems. Data informs direction, but empathy drives discovery. Talk to customers early and often. The roadmap lives in their frustrations.
Ruthless Prioritization
Saying no is the hardest and most important skill in product management. The best products are not the ones with the most features. They are the ones that solve the right problem exceptionally well.
Ship and Learn
Perfect is the enemy of shipped. Get your product into real hands, measure what matters, and iterate. The best insights come from production, not from planning documents or internal debates.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a product manager actually do?
A product manager is the translator who makes sure the entire company isn’t building something nobody wants. You’re constantly navigating tension between engineering, sales, design, and the customer, holding all of it in your head and making a call — often with incomplete information and always with real consequences. The best PMs aren’t the ones with the most features shipped. They’re the ones who said no to the right things.
What is the difference between product management and project management?
Product management decides what gets built and why. Project management decides how and when it gets delivered. A product manager owns the roadmap, defines requirements, and is accountable for whether the product solves a real customer problem. A project manager owns the timeline, manages dependencies, and is accountable for on-time delivery. Both are essential, but confusing them leads to products that ship on schedule but don’t move the needle.
How do you prioritize a product roadmap?
Start with the customer’s problem, not your stakeholder’s feature request. Use data to inform direction but empathy to drive discovery. The frameworks (RICE, MoSCoW, weighted scoring) are useful but secondary to judgment. The hardest and most important skill in product management is saying no — the best products solve the right problem exceptionally well rather than solving many problems adequately.
How has AI changed product management?
AI has compressed the build cycle dramatically. Small teams can now ship what previously required much larger ones. But the core PM skills — customer understanding, prioritization, stakeholder management — matter more, not less, because you can build faster doesn’t mean you should build more. The PM’s job is still to make sure speed doesn’t outrun strategy. AI also changes how PMs do their own work: research synthesis, competitive analysis, and requirements drafting are all faster, freeing time for the judgment calls that AI can’t make.
What makes a great product manager?
Customer obsession, ruthless prioritization, and the courage to kill features that aren’t working — including ones your team spent months building. The wins teach you about market timing and momentum. The failures teach you that being wrong quickly is infinitely better than being wrong slowly. Great PMs don’t just ship products. They build the discipline of product thinking across the entire organization.
Related Posts
How Did Product Management Shape a Technology Executive Career?
2009 – 2012
Director of Technology, Ascentum
Led a team of 5 focused on new product development for public engagement tools used across Canada. Defined requirements, built roadmaps, and validated with clients including Canada Post, Public Health Agency of Canada, and the Canadian Air Transportation Authority, working with responses exceeding 100,000 Canadians.
2007 – 2009
Co-Founder, Refresh Partners
Co-founded one of the first agencies focused on Facebook applications. Defined the repeatable product framework used to build brands in social media, growing from launch to over 30 Facebook marketing campaigns and winning a Yellow Crayon Award for the Burger King Whopper Sacrifice campaign.
2004 – 2007
Senior Product Manager, Autotrader Canada
Led product strategy during Autotrader’s transition from Canada’s leading automotive print publication to its leading automotive website, reaching 4 million monthly visitors, achieving record revenue levels, and positioning the platform for its eventual sale to Yellow Pages Group.
2000 – 2005
Product Manager, Certicom
Cut my teeth on product management fundamentals through Pragmatic Marketing training: maintaining roadmaps, writing requirements, running beta programs, coordinating launches, and learning the art of saying no while keeping everyone aligned. Certicom’s elliptic curve cryptography became the security foundation for BlackBerry devices and other mobile platforms.
1996 – 2000
Technical Manager, Asia/Pacific, Secure Computing
Managed client relationships across Asia/Pacific, working across a 12-hour time difference from the development team. Translated customer issues and feature requests into structured product feedback, first exposure to the discipline of defining requirements that move products forward.
Last updated: March 2026
