The Ultimate Guide of a Product Manager’s Day to Day Activities
Check out what are the daily tasks that a PM face and see how they fit into the product discovery and delivery processes
Uma versão em Português deste texto pode ser encontrada aqui
What does a product manager do? I have heard this question many times and didn’t know how to respond to it. Not having (yet) a formal education on how to become a PM, a lot of people don’t know exactly what are the daily activities of a product person.
The difficult part is that there isn’t a simple answer that summarizes its whole scope. There are various tasks involving countless responsibilities on how to explore product discovery, to land demands and assimilate results on product delivery, to connect business strategy with clients desires and to be an enabler amongst several areas.
To streamline the extent of a PM job description and help demystify this role to newcomers or to those who don’t work closely with them, I put together this flow which encompasses all product concerns and duties. It’s worth mentioning some content that inspired me to do this infographic:
- productboard’s The Essential Guide to Product Discovery
- ProductTalk’s Continuous Discovery
- Lucio Santana’s Product Discovery in the Multitrack of Madness
- Aktia Solutions’ Lean Product Management
Disclaimer: A centred approach of the PM role does not mean that he or she must be a centralizer of information and be solely responsible for the construction of the product to happen. He or she is placed as a central figure in this flow because the focus of the text is on his/her activities, but that does not mean that the PD, Tech Lead and other stakeholders do not have essential roles in the product development (and if infographics were created about these roles, they would be centred on each drawing).
🔮 Discovery
Digital product discovery is a process performed by product teams to refine ideas from user needs to the best solution hypothesis to be implemented. A good product discovery takes into account inputs from different sources:
- Strategic vision — board and investors’ desires have to back your product specification following short, medium and long-term business goals;
- Data — the product has to be built considering the relevance, frequency and representativeness of certain user behaviours (have you ever heard of being data-informed?);
- Internal clients — other teams within the company are a great source of information, mainly the ones with direct contact with the external clients such as Sales or Customer Success, so they should be stakeholders of the product
- User feedback — not less important is hearing the opinion of who is using or are going to use the product
All the information for solving user issues or improvements are assembled in an ideas repository and organized as their degree of certainty and clients’ impact.
Normally those ideas are arranged in a roadmap defined by a period predetermined by the company like a quarter or a semester. The unprioritized ideas are put aside (not put away) and can be revisited when it makes sense.
The initiatives listed on the roadmap are then organized in a problem and solution structure. There are lots of frameworks and methodologies on defining a problem and its best resolution. Good examples are:
- Lean Canvas — business plan template adaptation applicable to product development;
- Opportunity Solution tree — visual structuration that helps on refining issues through a non-linear organization of ideas and definitions;
- Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) — the framework that lists tasks intending in achieving good results in comprehending the real need of clients.
The work of mapping problem/solution, major pains and main drivers are commonly made with a Product Designer (or PD) who contemplates also the user experience (UX / UI).
There is plenty of tools used by both PM and PD such as user research, interviews, usage data analysis and validation with clients. It is paramount in this process of definition to double-check with the users and see if the solution proposed really deliver value and it is not only an unimportant detail (that is the difference between an aspirin vs vitamin feature).
The Tech Lead (together with the engineering team) should also play a role in refining the themes to identify technical feasibility and adherence to the architecture currently implemented and to bring the technologic point of view on the solutions hypotheses.
When an initiative is mature enough to become a product feature, it then moves to the product backlog.
The discovery is a continuous process that happens alongside with delivery which ships value to clients.
🎛️ Delivery
Digital product delivery is a process where product specifications are projected, coded and deployed by a development team to the users.
When a feature is on the product backlog, it can be refined into epics, tasks and subtasks to be developed by the engineering team.
It is pretty common hearing the term Product Owner (or PO) in this stage because on SCRUM/Kanban methodologies this is a role performed by a product manager. He or she is responsible to write user stories, attach flows, interfaces and other artefacts made available by the PD (UX / UI), prioritise the backlog and align the process with the team (probably in a multidisciplinary squad).
When the tasks are ready to be coded by the developers, they are estimated, receive story points and are allocated into the sprint backlog.
A sprint is a period where tasks are developed and usually is finalized with the delivery of value. Meanwhile, rituals and pre-settled reunions are aiming the process good pace: dailys, retrospectives, plannings and pre-plannings, reviews and other rites that make sense for the squad or the organization.
When new releases are shipped containing features that give value to users, they have to be monitored and be provided to such users. This process can be divided into several product rollouts until is accessible to all clients.
Needless to say, the product manager has to, not only keep track of the feature usage but also see the KPIs and results expected. This guarantees that the metrics are healthy and the objectives settled on discovery are being accomplished.
This analysis can and must generate new inputs in order to maintain cyclic discovery and delivery processes.
🧿 Value Stream
A product manager must be watchful if, in a strategic point of view, business goals are being translated in customers benefits.
Flooded with operational activities, it is common that metrics begin to not perform as expected or the business starts to pivot in another direction. That’s why a PM’s job must include the constant verification if the value stream is being followed, assuring that the opportunities being considered are aligned with the company’s mission and vision (the big divergence between output and outcome).
👥 Roles and responsibilities
In a nutshell, there is a lot of work on a product manager’s plate. Therefore, the roles and responsibilities must be clear among all the people that are part of building the product and has a say in its development.
Depending on the organizational structure, a PM can be placed in different formations. However ordinarily, the product manager is in the midst of 3 areas:
- Design — crucial in developing a digital product, a designer always has the counterpoint of representing the user in the day-to-day decisions. The PM considers all stakeholder’s points of view, but the PD contemplate mostly the user experience and how to achieve the best solution possible in the user perspective.
- Tech — the developers are vital, not only for the fact that they are directly involved in bringing the product to life but also because they ensure other critical aspects of the solution such as being scalable, reusable and maintainable (with few bugs). The PM works closely with the Tech Lead to assure that the deadlines are met and the sprint is fulfilled.
- Business — business people are intrinsically present on the client’s schedule. Assisting an incident, pitching a new sale or receiving a payment, they can perceive situations that users can’t see and numbers can’t bring to light. The PM must not only know deeply the business parts of the company but also have to understand how the organization is thriving and whether the objectives are being effectuated.
The product manager job is a bit complex, however, it consists basically in translate business needs in value to the users by a digital product. Or even, in interpreting user needs in business through a product. If you are a PM, I hope that this article meets your reality and please comment on what resonated the most on your daily routine or if there are different approaches that you deal with. If you are not a PM but want to become one: fasten your seat belts, you have a lot of work ahead of you ✌️.
