3 skills a Product Manager needs to succeed

Reflections on Enterprise Product Development 

As a Mobile Software Product Manager, I often get asked by aspiring Product Managers what skills are needed to break into this field. Often my standard reply would be the basic, hard skills. However, as I have gained more experience and upon reflection, I find that hard skills are not enough. Here are 3 things I end up doing more often in my role that have helped me be successful:

Herding Cats — For most products, there are multiple stakeholders and users who have disparate needs. Getting marketing, sales, finance, customer service, legal, to name a few departments, to agree to the scope and requirements is challenging. Herding these cats and articulating a product vision is an ongoing challenge in my role.

Questioning the status quo — In enterprise product development, I often run up against this situation: The key stakeholders and everyone has agreed in principle to change the way the product is going to work or develop a new product so as to meet the changing needs of the business. However, as soon as I dive deeper into what needs to change, the walls start coming up. The common refrain I hear is “This is how things are” or “This requirement is need for these 2 people in this division (who rarely use the product) to do their job”. This is because of an interesting conundrum: Businesses want to constantly adapt to meet market needs, however, the people running the business do not like change. Which leads me to the third aspect of my job.

Painting a Picture — Taking the disparate requirements from aforementioned departments and combining them into a cohesive whole is a fine art of compromise, balance and painting a picture, both literally and figuratively. I am always working on making sure everyone on the team has a shared vision of what the product will look like. This means I am not only constantly creating wire-frames, but also articulating and reminding everyone of that vision. Also, preparing and implementing change in any decent sized organization is a tough and ongoing challenge from the moment the product vision is articulated. This is where painting the product vision and what the change looks like to the users is another aspect of my job.

These are some of the skills I use on a daily basis in my job that help me make progress even when things are not going well.