Discussion of the Week: Mental Health Crisis in Product and Project Management?

Recently, I came across a news about a female manager in the IT industry who left her managerial role and started driving an auto-rickshaw. Her income decreased significantly, but according to her, she is happier and more satisfied than she was in her corporate career.

It made me pause and reflect.

As Product Managers, Project Managers, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and team leads, stress often becomes a normal part of our jobs. In fact, it becomes so consistent that many of us stop questioning it. We simply accept it as “part of the role.”

A student worries about failing an exam. Similarly, many PMs live with a constant fear of missing deadlines, disappointing stakeholders, or not delivering expected outcomes.

The challenge is that delivery timelines are influenced by countless variables, many of which are outside a PM’s direct control.

At the same time:

• Stakeholders expect commitments to be met regardless of changing circumstances.
• Teams may not always share the same sense of urgency and can become stuck debating minor details.
• Priorities shift constantly.
• A feature planned for months suddenly competes with a new idea that appeared in a stakeholder’s mind yesterday.
• Expectations increase, but resources, budget, and timelines often remain unchanged.

Individually, these situations seem manageable.

Together, they create an environment of continuous pressure.

The main concern is that we don’t discuss the mental health side of product and project management. We talk about roadmaps, velocity, KPIs, OKRs, Agile frameworks, and delivery dates. We skip the part of anxiety, burnout, self-doubt, workplace stress, or the psychological burden of being accountable for outcomes without having full control over all the variables.

Also Read: The Prism of Priorities: Seeing Beyond Stakeholder Noise

Many organizations promote productivity, but far fewer invest in psychological safety and employee well-being.

Many teams discuss blockers, but very few discuss stress.

Many managers ask for status updates, but not enough ask, “How are you doing?”

Technically the real question is not whether stress exists in product and project management.

The question is:

Have we normalized unhealthy levels of workplace stress and burnout to the point where we no longer recognize them?

I’d love to hear from fellow Product Managers, Project Managers, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and team leads:

• What creates the most stress in your role?
• Have you ever considered leaving product management or project management because of burnout?
• What practices, leadership approaches, or organizational changes have helped reduce stress for you and your team?
• How can we create more psychologically safe workplaces for professionals responsible for product delivery and project success?

Looking forward to the discussion.

If this resonates with your experiences or challenges, I’d love to connect and hear your perspective. Feel free to reach out https://tahirshahzad.com/contact/. Let’s continue the conversation and learn from each other.

You might want to understand if your absence breaks delivery, your system is fragile

Previous Edition of Discussion of the week: How AI First Discovery is Changing Attribution

About the author

Tahir Shahzad

Tahir Shahzad is a Product Manager, Product Owner, and technology consultant with over a decade of experience helping startups and organizations build products people actually use. If you are working on a product problem worth solving, reach him at tahirshahzad.com/contact/