Who is a Product Manager?

What is a PM?

A Product Manager is responsible for shipping great products. PM is also referred as CEO of the product which is correct in certain ways as he has to decide what to build, help the team to progress, prepare for launch. But in one the most important ways the description of PM as the CEO misses the boat: Product Managers don’t have direct authority over the people on their team. They sit on the intersection of technology , business and design.

PM is responsible for 4 major tasks

IDEATE-It starts with research and planning and coming up with ideas to solve an issue. Considering themselves as advocate of customers learning their needs and translating those needs to product goals.

PRIORITIZE -PM has number of ideas and problems to solve within timelines. His task is to formulate and line up all the task based on its requirements.

PERSUADE -Its job of the PM to identify an issue or problem users are facing, come up with a solution, convince the stakeholders and engineers to work towards the solution influencing them with his vision and research. It’s his duty to make the team understand the issue, how it affects the users and what can be done to target their pain point.

EXECUTE -Once everyone is on the same page, PM is also responsible for execution of ideas. He co-ordinates with engineers , unblocks them and gets it tested, tracks the progress and launches it smoothly.

Day to day work of a Product Manager varies over the course of product cycle.

1. Research & Planning : This involves working on any idea which may come from customer’s request, new technology, competitive analysis, user research, brainstorming or from a big vision for a product. He needs to thinks deeply about the problem he is trying to solve and the goals of the feature. Be ready with the answers of WHY?
2. Design : Once it’s decided on what the team is going to build then comes the design phase where defining the feature and functionality is done along with UI. A detailed functional specification is created that includes goals, use-cases, requirements, state of features and wireframes.
3. Implement & Test :During this phase he keeps track of the progress and makes adjustments, enables engineers and learns how things are unfolding. He will start gathering feedback , reviewing bugs, prioritizing them, running experiments and conduct dogfooding.
4. Release: Once development and testing is done , PM needs to make sure the launch is done smoothly. After the launch is announced, metrics are monitored, feedback and iteration is done.

Product Management is a highly collaborative role. You will have to focus on everything from a broader picture to small details. An actual job of a Product Manager can depend a lot on what the product is. So if you are looking for transition and PM is in your mind first understand a PM’s role and responsibilities and see if this interests you. If yes, let’s proceed to learn more about Product management.