What is a product manager?
A product manager improves the product by making decisions about what the priority is for the software team. As a product manager, you will combine perspectives from users, the tech team and the rest of the organization to determine what to build next. It is your responsibility to gain context, form a vision on how to best add value and then lead the organization towards that vision.
Understanding the user:
Product managers are the voice of the user for both the business and the tech team. To understand the user, you will do user interviews, collaborate with internal groups (such as customer service) and do market analysis to determine what the user needs. Skilled product managers don’t directly ask users what they want, but instead understand through observation and stay in the problem space. You will be using various types of user data before and after software releases to forecast and measure the impact of decisions made.
Working with the tech team:
A product manager has the most impact through working with the software developers. The development team relies on you to break the product vision up into small enough pieces that they can build it, feature by feature. The product manager produces a detailed and prioritized backlog, enabling the team to regularly release improvements while maintaining the current experience. You’ll realize that it is essential to foster a relationship of mutual trust with the developers. Ideally, you will motivate them to do the seemingly impossible, but also encourage the team to speak up when expectations are not reasonable. This way, you are always learning about the possibilities and limitations of the software.
Collaborating with the business:
With each incremental improvement released it will be your responsibility to coordinate and communicate throughout the organization. Stakeholders in the business will have opinions on what should be built, when it should be released and whether or not the work is effective. Much of your effort will be spent carrying the product vision within the company, understanding the various needs in the organization, facilitating cross-functional decisions and navigating organizational politics. The best product managers are trusted because of their reliable communication. You will learn when to dare to say no to the highest level people in the business and when to agree to a painful last minute change.
Real-world product management example
Let’s say you’re a product manager for an online store that has recently added the ability to order custom clothing. The team launched the experience and to everyone’s surprise, not one order has been placed. As the product manager responsible for this experience, it is on you to determine if the custom clothing offering should be improved or removed.
Your first step would be to look into the data and determine if users are interested in custom clothing and/or where they stop the buying process. The good news is that a lot of users are clicking in and starting to order, which means there is no need to remove the offering. However, they freeze after submitting dimensions and eventually leave the website. Next, you find customers to interview and learn more about their common questions and concerns.
In the interviews you learn that customers have two main questions: what will the clothing look like in my size, and what if it doesn’t fit? You take these questions and come up with two ideas to improve sales:
- Explain the return process and satisfaction guarantee
- Show updated images of the clothing with the custom dimensions
Based on conversations with the dev team and your intuition, you decide that the idea to dynamically show updated images is a lot more effort than the potential upside. Instead, you decide to clarify the satisfaction guarantee. Before asking the designer for options on how to clarify the policy, you will work with the customer success, legal and other relevant teams throughout the business to ensure they are ready for changes and that the information is correct.
Once you have alignment throughout the business, you write the product requirements so the dev team can start to build the improvement. After it has been live on the site for an appropriate amount of time, you start the product management process again.
What makes a great product manager?
The most important skills in product management are the soft ones — it doesn’t matter how technical you are if you don’t have good rapport within the organization. The basics begin with consistent communication, being flexible, constantly making decisions, acknowledging bad decisions and being comfortable with the unknown. You must understand the user, software cycle and business needs well enough to plan months — even years — ahead while listening to and setting expectations with everyone involved. The best product managers have built enough trust throughout the organization to lead at a senior level without having direct authority.
Though it’s a tough gig, being a product manager is a lot of fun. You will interface with all corners of the organization and will become the “go to” when people want to get things done. The best part is you get to be creative and make strategic decisions all while being technical and analytical. It’s an impactful role that fosters skills that you will end up using in almost any role or industry.
As you’ve read, being a product manager means finding the balance between the needs of the user, the tech team and the business to decide what to build next. You will need to have excellent communication skills and build strong relationships at every level of the organization. This will help you define the product vision and lead the team to consistently improve the product.
