A product manager is the individual who determines the needs of the consumer and the overarching business goals that a feature or product will satisfy, defines success for a product, and organises a team to make that vision a reality. I have a profound grasp of what it means to be a product manager after ten years of studying the craft. {www.atlassian.com/agile/product-management/product-manager}
The role’s recent inception is probably the reason for the ambiguity surrounding what a product manager does. Product managers are still defining their position, in contrast to practitioners of more established professions like design and engineering who have been able to categorise themselves by their areas of expertise.
Originally, a simple Venn diagram representing the product manager at the nexus of business, technology, and user experience was used to summarise product management by Martin Eriksson, the legendary product leader and creator of ProductTank. The product manager was referred to as the “CEO of the product” by Opsware CEO Ben Horowitz fifteen years ago. {www.atlassian.com/agile/product-management/product-manager}
Though not always with how their meanings are read, I agree with both Eriksson and Horowitz. When one views Eriksson’s diagram, one may assume that product managers oversee the product in relation to the three disciplines (business, technology, and user experience). But in reality, what he’s saying is that product managers have to make difficult choices and trade-offs in order to balance all three needs. When people hear Horowitz’s comparison, they tend to believe that product managers are particularly powerful. They don’t. However, just like a CEO, a product manager sets the objectives, defines success, inspires teams, and bears accountability for the result.
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The Duties of a Product Manager
The size of the organisation affects the specific responsibilities. For example, in larger organisations, teams of professionals comprise the product managers. While developers and designers oversee daily operations, create designs, test prototypes, and identify bugs, researchers, analysts, and marketers assist in gathering information. Although these product managers receive greater support, {www.atlassian.com/agile/product-management/product-manager} they also have to invest more effort in uniting these stakeholders behind a same goal.
Conversely, product managers at smaller companies are more likely to put in the practical effort that comes with developing a vision and seeing it through, rather than spending as much time trying to convince everyone to agree.
- Generally speaking, though, a skilled product manager will focus their attention on a small number of projects.
- recognising and expressing the needs of the user.
- keeping an eye on the market and creating competitive evaluations.
- Outlining a product’s vision.
- bringing stakeholders together behind the product’s vision.
- giving features and capabilities of the product priority.
- enabling autonomous decision-making in larger teams by fostering a common brain.
Owner Versus Manager of the Product
What a product manager performs can be further complicated by the fact that a team may or may not be following a particular agile approach. As an illustration, a team implementing scrum must additionally have a product owner.
Product owners should collaborate more closely with the development team to carry out the tasks necessary to achieve the goals that the product manager assists in defining, even as the product manager establishes the course of the product through research, vision-setting, alignment, and prioritisation. {www.atlassian.com/agile/product-management/product-manager}
But as team compositions and methods change, responsibilities may also. For example, in a non-Scrum environment (e.g., kanban or another approach), the product manager may find themselves assigning priorities to the development team and taking on a more significant role in ensuring alignment. In contrast, the product owner frequently ends up taking on some of the product manager’s duties if the team is using Scrum but lacks a product manager.
Teams must be careful to explicitly define roles because this can all get very murky very fast. If they don’t, they run the risk of reverting to the outdated software development methods where one group sets the requirements and then throws them over the fence for another group to build. Expectations become misplaced, time is lost, and teams run the danger of producing features or products that fall short of user needs when this occurs.
The Best Methods and Advice for Becoming a Fantastic Product Manager
One of the most fascinating things about being a product manager is that there is no one right way to do things, just as there is no one type of team. The craft has experienced an explosive rise in popularity and approach over the past 20 years. Product managers as a group are still having difficulty identifying their many areas of expertise, in contrast to designers who have effectively divided themselves into interaction designers, graphic designers, motion designers, and so forth.
People are only starting to pursue product management as their chosen discipline, which further complicates things. Younger generations are beginning their careers with product management in mind, while older generations “fell into product management” via engineering, design, finance, or marketing.
Nevertheless, there are a few abilities and methods that a competent product manager must learn.
Put Priorities First.
Recently, a coworker compared working in product management to being a politician. It’s not too far away. A certain amount of resources is allocated to both the politician and the product manager. Although the practitioner in each function will never be able to meet everyone’s demands, they must use those resources to the fullest extent possible in order to accomplish a greater good.
The product manager may be faced with choices at any given time, such as whether to prioritise the important and boring over the shiny and flashy, maintain a product’s current status quo or steer it in a new direction to expand its reach and align with larger business goals, or implement a feature that might satisfy one large customer but annoy 100 smaller ones.
The product manager makes the best choice when they have a clear awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of each option.
Understand the Terrain
Product managers must be the people with the most in-depth knowledge of the industry. They almost never get off to a blank slate. Product managers are most usually thrown into something that is already gaining traction. They will make poor choices if they jump right into execution without taking the time to gain their bearings.
Effective product managers start by asking questions and apply the brakes. In the initial months of your product management career, spend as much time as possible speaking with consumers. As many internal stakeholders as you can should be consulted. Recognise the business plan. Recognise the past. Recognise the influences that affect various people. Recognise the process involved in decision-making. You won’t be able to start making some independent decisions until then. {www.atlassian.com/agile/product-management/product-manager}
Give Your Group the Freedom to Decide for Themselves.
Not every decision can be made by product managers. Trust me. I have made an attempt. Almost all of the time, I have unread messages at the end of the day. I’m frequently two or three times booked. And I could never go through the entire day answering questions.
However, it isn’t—or shouldn’t be—the product manager’s responsibility to oversee every choice. Developing a “shared brain,” or a process for decision-making and a set of standards for elevating them, among your team members is essential to effective product management. Nine times out of 10, when someone asks a product manager a question regarding a choice they could have made on their own, it’s because they don’t have enough information to do so. Product managers that are great provide that context.
Understand How to Exert Influence Without Being in a Position of Power.
Although many team members initially would have preferred a more experienced leader, I know a junior product manager who is almost universally admired by her colleagues. How did she get them to reconsider? She listened to each member of the thirty-person team while taking them out for coffee. {www.atlassian.com/agile/product-management/product-manager}
Influence can take on various shapes. The first step is to listen to people and comprehend the influences that shape them. The second is figuring out how to convince them of your viewpoint. Developing your storytelling skills will help you much, even in situations when you lack supporting evidence. Some folks need to see you put in the effort before they will be persuaded. The secret to leading without direct authority is knowing which levers to pull and with whom.
Grow a Coat of Thick Skin
Those who have to make trade-offs will always be miserable. The secret is to first identify the appropriate trade-offs and then have the ability to articulate your reasoning for your choice. Even though someone doesn’t agree with your choice, if you do a good job of expressing it, they will almost certainly accept the process by which you arrived at it. Even in the event that they don’t, skilled product managers find a solution.
Outstanding Product Managers
I consider truly exceptional product managers to be a rare breed. They are the ones with the capacity to do everything listed above and create amazing product visions. It’s a unique breed that is very persuasive, forward-thinking, and capable of persuading others without the need for evidence. Elon Musk and Steve Jobs are two examples of such people.
We look up to these people in part because it feels good to attach a name and a face to a significant achievement. However, outstanding goods are almost never created by a single brilliant person. They are created by excellent teams of people who work incredibly hard. The product manager’s role is to create a distinctive approach to leading that task.
www.atlassian.com/agile/product-management/product-manager