- 18 Apr
- 2023
What Does a Product Manager Do? And How to Become One
It just might take a little more convincing during the hiring process to shake them out of their false preconceptions. They must use data-driven decision-making to propel the product forward. Growth, revenue, and profitability all fall under product management’s purview, even if they’re not directly responsible for them.
Their work is generally in alignment with company goals, but they also prioritize the best interests of the teams they manage and the users they create products for. Great product managers are laser-focused on results — for customers and for the business. You need a complete view of the team's progress towards goals to understand how your product is performing. At the highest level, you are responsible for setting your product's vision and strategic direction. You need to be able to clearly articulate the business case of a given initiative or feature and then connect back to your product vision and goals. Doing so helps your team understand the "why" behind what you are building.
Create compelling stories for buy-in from executives
Before joining the team, she was a Content Producer at Fit Small Business where she served as an editor and strategist covering small business marketing content. She is a former Google Tech Entrepreneur and she holds an MSc in International Marketing from Edinburgh Napier University. The job title itself makes it clear that this is a junior-level position, which is good.
- This involves bridging gaps between different functions within the company and aligning key teams including marketing, sales, and customer support.
- You can see what hiring managers typically expect from a product manager, and get an idea of how the role can vary from company to company.
- Product managers are responsible for crowdsourcing, developing, and curating ideas that will deliver value to customers.
- While certification is also not necessary, you'll find that certificate programs can give you the leverage you need to land a competitive job as a product manager.
- Then, translating those abstract ideas into the tactics required to make them a reality is all part of the job.
- Even if they don’t all like each other, respect and credibility are the minimum threshold required for a functional organization and product development process.
- It can also be challenging if the more technical founders or C-levels prefer working directly with engineers.
As a member of a product team myself, I work daily with product managers and interviewed dozens more about their roles and responsibilities. Despite the advice here, I’ve learned that there is no one way to apply principles of product management. Every product has its own goals and challenges which require a unique and customized approach to product management. Martin Eriksson famously described product management as the intersection of business, user experience, and technology. They manage project features, the roadmap that ensures timely completion and the strategies underlying both its development and release.
Capitalizing on Customer Meetings
Solid management experience is essential for the role, as is the ability to work with top executives. For instance, both customer support and sales positions entail regular interactions with customers. Additionally, any position where you’ve managed a team qualifies as leadership experience. Aside from earning a certificate and taking courses, hard and soft skills are both important in product management.
They use this data to create new products and improve existing ones. With the right knowledge and determination, you can gain the necessary experience to embark on a successful career as a product manager. The three major areas of product management are discovery, planning and development. These three pillars compose an industry-wide template, used as a practical aid for defining roles and responsibilities among products’ stakeholders. Product planning involves developing a guide—often called a roadmap—for product design. Using the information gathered in product discovery, the roadmap sets out a timeline, identifies key milestones and divides responsibilities among teams, all to achieve the best possible product.
Product Managers Love ProjectManager
It may also uncover disconnects in product-market fit or pricing that motivate some customers to abandon the product. Even how product managers schedule their day can lead to increased output and higher-quality working sessions. By minimizing context switching, product managers can cluster similar tasks together to maintain focus and limit distractions. Project management tools have also made a massive impact on how product managers keep track of things.
And, not to be forgotten, product management must also establish a method for closing the loop with customers so they know their complaints and suggestions were heard and, when applicable, have been addressed. Many bells and whistles will intentionally be excluded from the Minimum Viable Product, as the goal is to ensure the core functionality meets the market’s needs. Nice-to-haves can wait for a later stage in the product lifecycle since there’s little point in expending additional resources on an unproven product. Once product management has evaluated the potential market, they can then try to address it if there’s a significant enough opportunity. Processes will evolve and adapt to the organization, the product lifecycle stage, and product team members’ and executives’ personal preferences. If a product manager can’t create and deliver a story that has those elements then they need to go back to the drawing board.
Marketing
At a tech company, teams are usually comprised of engineers, designers, and strategists. User research and data science teams may act as support to the team if PMs require more information on the product’s user base and metrics. While PMs are responsible for all aspects of the product, they do not work alone to build it. The majority of their work is spent communicating with other people in the company and rallying them together to help create the product. Product managers typically work with company executives, customers and clients, and the cross-functional team they supervise that is tasked with building the actual product. Product managers keep the overall direction of the product in mind at all times.
Different ones can be employed at different times, providing a fresh way to gain some clarity about what should jump to the front of the queue. Without manufacturing momentum, windows of opportunity can close, and competitors can make significant gains. Product management must keep the train moving forward, even though they don’t have any engines of their own. One advantage of these side projects is that you can showcase your work by creating a slideshow or written report that you can share on your personal website and LinkedIn profile. To get the best possible experience please use the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Microsoft Edge to view this website.
Relationship management.
A project manager is responsible for successfully completing and delivering a project. But a product manager is responsible for the complete life cycle of the product, i.e., planning, developing and marketing the product. Especially in earlier-stage companies, it’s https://wizardsdev.com/en/vacancy/product-manager/ important to know how involved the founder/CEO/CTO is in the product process. If they are deeply involved, the PM role may play more of a support role, to flesh out their ideas or validate concepts with customers, versus conceiving and driving ideas of their own.
Here are some job descriptions based on real job ads that are live at the time of writing. If you’d like to check out more of these, we’ve got a full guide to product manager job descriptions. The roles are defined differently within each organization, and there can be overlaps in responsibilities. Companies that have both a product manager and a product owner should clearly define responsibilities and expectations to prevent misalignment. The product manager and product owner titles are not interchangeable.