Introduction
The concept of a “product manager” has evolved more or less over the years. Depending on what generation you ask, you’re more than likely to get some derivative of product management, often the role itself combined with other roles like project management, scrum, architect, etc. Fortunately, the core of what makes a “product manager” has remained the same. In today’s post, we’ll dive into what it means to be a product manager at its truest sense.
What is a Product Manager?
A “product manager” is, at its simplest form, an individual responsible for the development of one or more products for an organization. Product managers not only recognizes market/customer need, but owns the strategy to develop and iterate those products to meet that need.
It’s generally said that products are a combination of three key areas: technology, business, and user experience. A product manager’s principle purpose is not necessarily to manage all three areas, but rather balance all three and make decisions and trade-offs. Quite frankly, product managers are effectively “mini-CEOs” in that they set the goals, define the success, manage stakeholders, and ultimately are responsible for the outcome of a product.
From a high-level view, a product manager:
- Monitors the market and their target audience
- Understands their target audience’s needs
- Defines the vision for a product with respect to their audience
- Aligns stakeholders with the vision of said product
- Prioritizes product features, capabilities, etc.
- Cross-collaborates with teams to execute a product’s roadmap
Or, in one-line, a product manager tells a company where, when, and how to shoot.
The definition of a product manager can go a bit further with the concept of a product owner. In many organizations, these two roles may be one in the same. However, traditionally speaking, product managers:
- Define product vision
- Outline success metrics
- Collaborates with external stakeholders
- Owns the marketing, launch, and ROI of a product
While product owners:
- Execute on a product vision
- Develops a plan to meet success metrics
- Collaborates with internal stakeholders
- Owns the development/engineering work backlog
Even more, at times, a product manager may double (or triple) as a program manager, project manager, and/or scrum master, etc.
How to Be an Effective Product Manager
In general, to be an effective product manager, you’ll want to be able to:
- Understand the market and your audience
- Define your product’s vision, strategy, and roadmap
- Illustrate your product’s user journey and path to value
- Cross-collaborate with the teams needed to progress your product
Understanding your Market and Audience
If you do not understand who your product is meant for, you cannot confidently build something that will deliver long-lasting value to them. Having a market-driven, data-backed approach is at the heart of successful product management. This means that every decision you make, whether you’re ideating, prioritizing, building, etc. needs to be backed by clear understanding of what you’re trying to achieve and why.
Understand the importance of being close to your customers and market, empathizing with their problems, and responding effectively. It’s not just about following trends, but also about anticipating needs and delivering value where it matters most.
Data is your most valuable asset as a product manager. Identify and analyze all sources of market data — customer interviews, surveys, user feedback, market trends, competitive analyses, etc. If you have no data, you have nowhere to start.
Defining Vision, Strategy, and Roadmap
Good products solve real problems. The best products are solutions that people are both looking for and willing to pay for. As you engage with your customers and market, document and understand opportunities and problems that you and your organization is poised to address. Just like a good business understands and focuses in on a particular niche, a good product must understand and focus on a specific opportunity or problem. I do not recall to whom the saying should be accredited to, but “if you try to solve everyone’s problem, you will solve no one’s problem.”
By understanding exactly what you are trying to achieve, you then want to define your vision, strategy, and roadmap. Simply put:
- Your vision is the value proposition of your product — why should people care about what you have to offer?
- Your strategy is the core of your product — how does it deliver said value to your target customer?
- Your roadmap is the evolution of your product — if A is an idea and B is you fully addressing an opportunity or problem, how does your product get from A to B?
UX/UI and Return On Investment
With a vision, strategy, and roadmap in place, you’ll need to be able to pull together and design how your users will experience your solution and collect value from it. We have your product’s who, what, where, when, and why — but now we need the how.
The simplest way I can make this point is to imagine a product that has all the functionalities it needs to achieve some goal, but that the functionalities are so disjointed (all over the place) that it is difficult for your users to use said product and solve the problem they wanted to solve from the beginning.
Product design is a key factor in your product’s success. Not only must your product be able to deliver the solution your customer is looking for, but it must be accessible enough for your customer to get it. Or in other words, the they must be able to use the tool you give them!
If your product cannot reasonably be used by your target customer to get a return on their invested time and money into your product, your product is effectively useless.
Cross-Collaborate to Build and Iterate
If you can say yes to all of the following, then you’re ready to build and iterate:
- You know what problem you’re trying to solve and who it’s a problem for
- You know what your solution offers and have a plan to make your solution real
- You know how your customer can use your solution to solve their problem
Then all that’s left is to execute upon your idea and make it real.
As a product manager with a goal and a plan, you’ll work with a range of different stakeholders to bring your product (or feature) from idea to reality. These could include: UX/UI designers, technical architects, developers and engineers, marketing, sales, QA, etc.
You need to be able to collaborate with each stakeholder to bring your product from its A to B.
- Work with marketing and sales to align on how your solution should be positioned towards the market so you can connect your product to its intended customers
- Work with developers and engineers to pull together the code and databases necessary to have a functional product in the first place
- Work with your UX/UI designers to define and fine-tune your solution’s user experience and interface to have a product your customers can use
- Work with QA to ensure your product does what it’s meant to do
- Work with solution architects to help avoid “building your product into a hole” (e.g. being so specific that it cannot easily adapt to future needs)
- Work with technical writers to help author documentation so stakeholders can understand your product
The list goes on. The takeaway here is you’ll need to learn how to and to be comfortable collaborating with other experts in your organization to effectively, and efficiently, build and iterate upon your product. Brush up on skills like communication, negotiation, and teamwork to succeed on this front!
Conclusion
The exact definition and role of a product manager may differ from organization to organization. However, at the end of the day, their core purpose is the same:
- Understand the market and audience
- Own the product’s vision, strategy, and roadmap
- Own product’s user journey and ROI
- Coordinate/influence resources to build and iterate upon the product
If you take nothing else but one point from today’s post, let it be that data should drive every decision or action you make. The keystone of an effective product manager, the defining factor of everything we’ve touched upon today, is data. Without data, we do not know the who, what, where, when, why, or how of our customer and our product — and with that, as product managers, we are flying blind.
That being said, I hope my take on the fundamentals of product management has taught you a thing or two. Please reach out if you’d like me to dive more into any particular topic! I’m here for you and your journey as a product manager.