Product Management 101
For folks like me who want to explore about Product Management, this post sure would be an interesting read. A good starting point to your career or a very interesting deviation for switching a career. Don’t panic because I am at the place where you are too.
Before you start assuming a lot about who a Product Manager is, it’s important to know that the Product Manager is not actually a manager, they are communication hubs in organisations. A communicator and enabler for engineers and designers. They ensure if the product is shipped well to the customers, and makes sure the user workflow is a breeze.
Usually there is a product team or a feature team to manage the product. Before diving deeper, it’s important to understand that product is not always a complete application as a whole. A feature is also treated as a product. For instance, in Facebook, the newsfeed, the user profiles, the messaging and commenting may all look as part of a bigger product. But they are separate products but with the same style guidelines patched into a product.
It’s always best to analyse how a product is built and how each feature was developed and track down the roadmap of the particular product. Doing this would help you think in the same minds of a product manager.
Sometimes, the role of a PM varies from company to company because their role deviates when they work at different kinds of companies. There are three categories of Product Managers, they are being divided based on the stakeholders you work for.
Now that I have given an idea about product management, here is a gist of how a product evolves which is also called as the product roadmap.
This is a very simple product roadmap for your understanding. Usually product roadmaps in organisations are more complex with stakeholders, milestones, delivery details, cadences specified for every iteration. To create simple roadmaps like the one which I have shown above, please check out, https://waymark.io/editor.
The best way to start with this career is to have a deep understanding about each step in the product roadmap and then you are good to go. All the best y’all!