The key Process Skills for a Product Owner, Manager, and Leader
A frequently asked question from Product Owners and Product Managers in the field is: “What are the most important skills for a Product Owner/ Product Manager?” Some of the best Product Owners, Product Managers, and Product Leaders we have worked with have mastered the core Professional Product Management competencies, as discussed in this article. Many of them however, have also mastered the Process Skills area as defined in the Professional Product Management Framework. These Process Skills will be discussed in this article in more detail. But first, let me introduce you to the Professional Product Management Framework to position these core skills.
The Professional Product Management (PPM) Competency Framework covers the product management skills and competencies that you may need to develop. This framework is used by organizations to hire, develop and retain treir product professionals. It is a comprehensive framework that allows to be tailored to an organization’s specific needs.
We’ve learned that at the core of professional product management it is all about Communication and Entrepreneurship. Product Managers create value by seeking out new opportunities, by finding problems worth solving and communicating that to the rest of the organisation. The other six areas that product managers need to master are Leadership skills, Product skills, People skills, Process skills, Business skills, and Market skills.
In this article, we’ll explore the Process Skills of a Product person in more detail. The other competencies areas are discussed in separate articles, listed at the bottom of this article.
Process skills
The Process area is a rather comprehensive area, and the exact skills you need here are very dependent on your exact context. The profession of Product Management touches on many different processes, and therefore many process-related skills. The type of product, who uses it, and the type of company will determine what process skills are actually needed. For example, consider being a data science PO/PM at a bank, versus being the PO/PM for a fast-moving consumer product at a manufacturer, versus being a mobile app PO/PM for a food-delivery company. These different companies and products will have very different processes in place, and may require different skills from a PO/PM, right?
That said, having basic technical understanding of what is under the hood, how to deliver the product to customers, how to developer great product experiences, and mastery of the tools that PMs use is definitely important for the PO/PO role. Also consider skills related to product marketing, product development, agile development, product design, and release management as some universal skills for a Product Owner/Manager to develop.
These skills are grouped into the following competencies:
Data & Analytics
Product Managers often need to be able to surface data relevant to the team, and design tests based on data-driven hypotheses. Anchors decisions in data. Uses data insights to evaluate and inform the story they tell. Partners effectively with Analytics to understand and refine how data insights impact strategy. Can independently seek basic data insights.Experimentation & Validation
Product Managers need to understand what the company and its people need to learn. They can effectively run experiments and gather learnings. They share learnings with the team and key stakeholders. And they need little support to define actions emerging from learnings.Product Design & Experience
A great Product Manager has an understanding of Product Design and User Experience processes, patterns and practices. They seek to effectively collaborate and communicate with the Product Design and User Research team(s).Product Development
A Product Manager should have a good understanding of LEAN and/or Agile ways-of-working. They should contribute to improving the LEAN and/or Agile way-of-working in the team. They focus on frequent releases, delivery of value, and customer-validation.Product Management
Product Managers should be able to demonstrate solid knowledge and understanding of Product Management processes, patterns, practices, tools, and responsibilities. They should be able to effectively collaborate and communicate with the Product Management Team. They contribute to improving the Product Management profession.Product Marketing
Product Managers may need to support the Product Marketing team in defining the interstory, launch plans, product positioning, customer personas, and packaging approach. They may contribute to defining new and existing feature onboarding processes. And they may contribute to the creation of documentation for Customer Support, and Sales.Product Operations
Product Managers often need to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of and to visibly value Product Operations processes, patterns and practices. They effectively collaborate and communicate with the Product Operations team. They contribute to building an effective and efficient Product (Operations) function in the company, by sharing potential process, structure or tool-improvements with the Product Operations team.Release Management
Great Product Managers ensure the product development team has a consistent, reliable shipping momentum. As a result, the team is reliable in their forecasts and progress, and demonstrates this with demos and in high team morale. Product Managers may be able to spot product quality risks across teams.
Want to learn about the other Professional Product Management Competency Areas?
The following articles discuss the other Competency Areas from the Professional Product Management Framework in more detail:
Excited to move your Product Management skills forward?
Becoming an expert in a field takes more than a single course. It is more like a journey, requiring knowledge gathering and experience in practice. That is why we have developed Product Management Learning Journeys for Product Owners, Product Managers, and Product Leaders.
If you want to use a structured approach to boost just those skills that you need to improve in order to take the next step in your career, then consider our Professional Product Management Training Modules. Modules like Value Maximization, Envisioning & Storytelling, Strategy & Roadmapping, or Stakeholder Engagement & Politics provide you with 8+ week learning and development tracks, allowing you to really improve a specific area of competence, instead of going through a very generic course that covers all kinds of different topics on a high-abstraction level.
Our learning journeys are designed to find the perfect balance between the theory from university with the intensity of a bootcamp. These ingredients are blended into a training format that fits anyone’s preferred style of learning. We teach you enough theory to know when you’re playing with fire, but we focus on applicability for the job to be done.
The journeys offer a personalized approach for professionals to grow their capabilities and to advance their careers. The blended learning journeys around product management consist of (competency) assessments, trainings, workshops, exercises, on-demand content, personal reflection, coaching, and consultancy.
The foundation of the product management journey is formed by the PPM framework. It’s connected to your product career framework and is implemented throughout the whole learning journey.
Want to get started? Take a moment to explore our website, learn more about our approach to Product Management, or schedule a chat about how we can help you, your team, or company to move forward.
