“- Hi ! I’m a product manager” “-Uh, what?”

There’s a brand new phenomenon that has happened to me. For the past few months, when I say I am product manager, people have been frowning, looking at me and saying, ‘Hmm, product manager?’ with a look of incomprehension on their faces.

Yes, since I became product manager (PM), it feels like nobody understands what I do. The purpose of this article is to make you discover this job, which is still quite unknown!

So what is a product manager?

In Inspired — a must read about product management — Marty Cagan defines the product manager as:

“Somebody responsible for evaluating opportunities and determining what gets built and delivered to customers”.

Each person has their own way of working and every company works in a different way. Often, I start by saying that I am a member of a team — the product team. Then I briefly explain that a company is constantly evolving, maybe even more for a start-up. There is no shortage of opportunities and ideas, and you have to move forward while staying aligned with the company mission. That’s the heart of our function.

Is it already a little clearer for you? Let me continue!

A versatile job

The PM function requires to cover very different areas. The PM must understand the needs of the users — farmers in our case — to the best of her ability. She must be able to put herself in their shoes, understand the challenges farmers face and imagine solutions to address them. She must both solve the problems and understand the ones that will come.

She must also understand the business — how every department in the company works. The different teams (marketing, sales, support, hardware, software, etc.) all have different needs, goals and perspectives. An overview is therefore crucial in order to understand the different situations and find a compromise between the different parties.

Data also plays a crucial role. Which information does the farmer consult the most? How often does he visit the app? How successful is the new feature? Usage statistics tell us how users behave.

Finally, the PM must also understand the market and the industry in which it operates. She needs to listen to what’s going on in order to identify new opportunities.

The product team

My team consists of a head of product, designers and developers.

Together, we carry the product vision. The product vision describes the future we are trying to create. Our job is also to align everyone around this vision, so that we achieve it, together.

We collect the opinions of farmers and our colleagues, we structure them, we prioritize them. We work hand in hand. We also project ourselves in the future. We look at what’s happening in the agricultural world or in new technologies. We weigh the pros and cons, we interact. We look at short and medium-term projects. We ask ourselves questions, we iterate, we change our minds.

For me, being a PM means juggling with several subjects at the same time: following projects under construction, staying open and listening as much as possible, looking at what will happen afterwards.

Why is it not such a well-known job?

To be honest, I didn’t know about the title before I started. I really wondered what it meant — I wasn’t going to really own or manage the product, was I? But when I read the job description, I knew right away that I was going to like it.

You don’t learn how to become a PM at school. There is little academic training on the subject. The training that does exist are aimed at people who are retraining or people who are new to the profession.

It must also be said that on the other side of the Atlantic, the profession is much more common. According to a survey, a start-up in Silicon Valley recruited one PM for every 8 developers on average, while in Europe the ratio was 1:24 in 2019. In Europe, this role is then often shared between the engineers and the co-founders/CEOs of the company. One of the reasons: the usefulness of the product team is not yet known and recognized. But this is changing, especially for start-ups and tech companies.

So… I hope you now understand a little bit more about what a product manager is. Don’t hesitate if you want to know more !

About Sencrop:

Farmers use the weather every day. With the largest fleet of agricultural weather stations in Europe, Sencrop is a start-up with a mission: Help farmers make better decisions.

More information about Sencrop, click here!