Various Definitions of Product Manager
Product Manager is the most ambiguous role ever in the startup industry. Other roles such as backend engineer, mobile developer, and product designer are quite clear in terms of relation to what subjects you learned during college and what you will be in your career. But product management skills are not something we learn in college.
The definition of the role product manager also differs from one country compared to another country. The scope of work for a product manager in early-stage startups can be different compared to growth-stage startups. Even worse expectations for product managers roles in one company can differ compare to another company that is in a similar stage.
Beyond all of the differences in expectations and job description, as a product manager your main job is should be the same which is “discover and deliver the right product that impacts customers and business”.
Below I want to share various definitions of product manager that we ever heard about product manager roles.
Sit between technology-business-design
If you are an aspiring product manager or currently working as a product manager, you must have seen these kinds of circles that say “You are here” to tell you that you are the one sitting among these 3 sides: business, tech, and design (UX).
Let me tell you the truth. I would say the diagram below is the real case if you are working as a product manager in a startup.
Yep, the fact is you are sitting with so many people from multiple types of departments.
- If you are working as a product manager in the Fintech industry you will even have a case when you have to deal with regulators and government institutions.
- If you are working on a B2B product, you might need to talk to some people from your client’s company that working in different roles.
- If you are working on growing startups, some parts of your system might be developed by a third-party vendor. So you will talk to your internal engineering team and at the same time align what you do with this third-party engineering team.
The first diagram is not enough to simulate the complexity of stakeholders that PM needs to handle. That’s why one of the important skills of product managers is stakeholder management. Stakeholder management means you as a product manager need to align the goal of each stakeholder with the product you are developing and make sure that each and every stakeholder passion about it and help you to make sure this product give an impact on the customer and the company.
Master of nothing
You already see that product managers sitting among these people from across departments. So you must be expecting the product manager should understand all of these aspects really good that the product manager can work with them smoothly.
Well, the fact is working as a product manager is full of a statement like “I don’t know yet” or “I will look into it”.
Working as a product manager, you must understand the basics of each part which are technology, business, and design, but it doesn’t mean that you have to be an expert on all of it. As a product manager, you need to be resourceful. You have your teammate, so keep asking them a lot of questions. You also need to master the skill of being a self-learner and fast-learned, including the skill of how to google.
In an ideal startup team structure, the product manager is usually accompanied by a set of teams, for example :
- Technical leader or engineer manager → this role will help you to guide any technical difficulty, estimate effort for the delivery process, and also guide you on whether the product is feasible to build or not.
- Product researcher → this role will help you mainly during the discovery process by conducting user research, interview, and testing. Product researcher will help you make sure what next to build or check whether certain product request is worth building.
- Product marketing → this role will help you in go to market plan, product marketing will help to craft product messaging for release and make sure the adoption of the product you build by providing feedback from end users.
Product managers know many things, but not at the level of expert. Product managers are generalists, not a specialist. In the end, you have to rely on your team to back you up when you don’t know and it is fine to don’t know because working as a team in the startup means we have the collective knowledge to make sure the product delivers an impact.
Live in the future and go backward
Product vision is the key here. Besides the CEO, product managers should be the ones that have a clear vision of what the future of the product look like or even the future of your company looks like.
The product manager is the one that guides the set of engineering teams where they go and through which path. As a product manager, you have to be crystal clear about what is the future look like and what the success of the product looks like. That is why product managers live in the future and go backward to be a guide for the team.
As a product manager, you are also asked a lot of whys, for example, “why did we develop this product?”, “why did we build it that way?”, “why do users need this?”. Product managers need to make all of these questions answered as soon as possible because if not they will walk in a lack of self-confidence.
On the other side, different parts of the team might want to go a different way, they are thinking another feature or product should be better than the one that you are currently developing. Your job is to convince them why is this the best product we need to build and why to do it now instead of later. You might also see some engineers in your team lack of motivation to do their jobs, so you have to be the one that shed the light on why this product is important and how it impacts the business in terms of revenue number and also how it is impacting many many users out there with its presence. By doing this speech, you will boost your team morale and make them understand what they are doing is worthy and impactful to the society around them.
Hope everyone gets better expectations of what product managers do and be better product managers in your company!
Happy to discuss anything about the product management world. Can ping me thru Linkedin DM!
