A Day in the Life of a Product Manager
I find the title of this article very fascinating for two reasons:
- The frequency with which I get asked this question
- The blatant lie that the title holds; one just cannot accurately describe what a day looks like in the life of a PM. Why? Because one day is never like the other.
Hello, this is Khadija! A Biz Product Manager at Dastgyr who is building the retailer (can also be referred to as the ‘buyer’) side of our B2B marketplace. It’s been almost a year since I began my career in Product and I have realized that while it’s one of the buzziest professions, it is also one of the most vaguely defined ones.
My typical conversations with people look somewhat like this:
Them: ‘Hey, Khadija! Heard you work at Dastgyr. So what do you do there?’
Me: ‘Hi, I am a product manager!’
Them: ‘Rrrrright…so what exactly do you do?’
And following this conversation comes a long sigh… not because I don’t like to talk about the details of my work, but there’s just so many different moving parts to explain. I usually mention the following to describe my work:
- I work at the intersection of user experience, technology, and business.
- I am the bridge between technology and business.
- I am the voice of the user in discussions where the end-user is not present.
- I write docs. Lots of them.
And trust me, this is far from an exhaustive list.
So let’s not get into the details of what a day looks like in the life of a product manager. Let’s instead discuss some of the key responsibilities of a PM.
At that beautiful intersection where technology, design, and business meet, you find what is known as a Product Manager. We are individuals who are the voice of the customer in meeting rooms where they can’t be present, the bridge that eliminates the existing gaps between business and technology teams, the structured communicators in chaos, and ruthless prioritizers in times of war.
Do you think I just exaggerated the last bit? Not really. Let’s dive into each of these roles that a PM plays:
- Voice of the customer:
Being a product manager means you have to be the voice for many stakeholders, customers being the most important. Why? Because in meetings where important product decisions are being made, you’ll find a multitude of stakeholders: engineers, business teams, executives, and product managers. But one stakeholder is usually missing: the end-user of the product. This is where the product manager steps in and ensures that the customer’s voice is heard when making those important product decisions. This voice can hail from user research, data gathered from analytics or user interview results.
2. Bridging gaps between business and technology:
For the success of any product or service, it is imperative that the business and technology teams are in sync with each other. However, these two teams are seldom able to break the communication barriers that exist between them. Business teams are unable to understand the technical lingo of engineers, and engineers are immersed in their code which leaves little room for them to divert attention toward business metrics. This is where a product manager steps in and does two things:
- For business teams, the product manager translates the technical lingo into ordinary, understandable terms
- For the technology team, the product manager builds the importance of business metrics and feeds the overall context of the market within which the company operates
3. Structured communicators in chaos:
Imagine chaos all around the world. But there’s one person who never has the luxury to get swamped. Yes, that’s a product manager. No matter how high the stakes get or how miserably a deployment fails, a product manager is expected to communicate timely and effectively with all stakeholders. The communication must remain structured, like our feature documentation. This means taking a very top-down approach. At the top, you’re expected to define the problem or the situation under consideration and then go into the specifics of it till you have explained everything the other stakeholder wanted to know.
4. Ruthless prioritizers in war:
Previously. you imagined chaos. Now imagine war! A battlefield where you, the PM, are expected to make a decision on what is catered to first: wounded soldiers, strategizing how to halt the enemy approaching your base, or withdraw completely and give up. Similar to a war zone, a product manager is faced with multiple requests coming in from business teams, C-suite leadership, as well as from customers. Now that’s a pretty long list. However, whatever the situation may be, the PM must have an answer to this question:
‘What do we do now, what do we do later, and what do we never do?’
This requires the PM to be a ruthless prioritizer who ensures only those things get built today which are aligned with business objectives and customer needs. Blocking noise and making these decisions on the go is one of the defining characteristics of a PM.
I hope this was enough to shed some light on how incredibly diverse a product manager’s responsibilities are. For anyone who is pursuing the PM dream, you should start practicing wearing these hats in your everyday life. Be that structured communicator when there’s a conflict between two or more people around you or start prioritizing your routine tasks ruthlessly while optimizing for impact. Know that there’s no end to the possibilities you can create for yourself once you put your mind to it, and being a PM is one such possibility!
