What does a Product Manager really do?
- Radha Rani
- Sep 6, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 7, 2023
What does a Product Manager really do? There is no notebook answer to this. Everyone explains it as per their experience in industry as the responsibilities are very vast and dynamic.
Finding role of product management is really complex due to below reasons:
1. No proper definition or boundaries of the role
2. In many cases, the product manager authority is really vague and they have to use a lot of influence to get work done
Also depends on size of organization - In small organizations, a prod man will anything and everything from market research to deployment and GTM. As the organization structure grows, there becomes departments as per different kind of tasks involved in product management. You need to navigate that whole department and use your influence and power to effectively communicate and story telling to get things done so as to achieve a balance between customer needs and business needs.
3. Overlap and Distinction among Product Owner and Product Manager
Product Manager - Responsible for defining Mission, Vision and the success goals
Product Owner - Responsible for breaking the high level of requirements/features to achieve success goal in day to day life, for e.g., breaking the features into epics, user stories and tasks.
There lies intersection between UX, Technology and Business (the key departments of any product), a product manager sits right at the intersection point. Prodman has to make the balance among 3 and make the trade off decisions to everyone's best. To build something intuitive, easy to use, provide major feature as per user needs to solve their problem, eventually is capable of getting revenue out of it & ensuring that this all is in line with the high level mission and vision of the business line and the organization.
Featured Post:
Major Responsibilities of a Product Manager:
Create Ideas for New Products by Customer Research - Customer interviews and surveys are conducted directly by Prodman or some secondary agency to get an insight of consumer behavior. That data needs to be analyzed to find the scope of some need, many a times consumer himself doesn't know the gaps.
Advocate and understand customer needs - Unfulfilled needs that has a market to hit and could be monetized in future can be considered as an Idea to be analyzed further.
Access & analyze competition - It is possible to focus on the competitors in the area you operate in, see and understand their approach. Its possible you will capture some needs/problems within their process or can come up with better way to accomplish same results which leads to efficient process & cost saving.
Define the Product Vision - Once your problem statement is finalized. Prodman needs to define a one liner product vision, what should the product accomplish in a little long term in terms consumer and business needs.
Develop the Product Line Strategy - To solve the customer problem, how many solution or product you are going to deliver and when and how they will be delivered. What would be the Product Roadmap roughly for next 6 months to 1 year which consists of the high level rough timelines, also the stakeholders and teams that will be involved and definition of their roles & responsibilities towards the product. Exact minute timelines of tasks are later on decided and conveyed by respective teams.
Communicate Product Requirements - Of course, Prodman wont break the entire product features for all the stakeholders, but its his responsibility to convey the entire idea and the roadmap to all the major stakeholders and explain the vision and mission so that everyone remains aligned towards one goal at all times. Its then further Engineering team, marketing team, product owners responsibilities to breakdown the features and define their own deadlines in terms of HOW and WHEN. Product Manager is majorly responsible for WHY of the product.
Create a shared brain - Align all stakeholders, including engineering, sales, marketing, and support, around the shared vision for the product. Periodically Prodman keeps on reviewing the product to see if the movement is aligned towards the vision. As in complex products (tangible or intangible), bunches of requirements comes from customers, they want everything, many a time even the stakeholders comes up with the features that can be added..It all depends on vision and mission written in product roadmap then, if the ideas are moving the product away from the entire product's vision then its a major deviation..in that case the idea is either thoroughly rejected or analyzed deep down further. In no way, any idea should deviate the product from organization's vision, its not appreciated. And when the idea seems to be aligned with visions, then it depends on the promised deadlines, budget and other available resources.
Manage Product Testing - Collaborate with the technical team to review the product, detect and fix bugs and make necessary improvements. Run beta and pilot programs with samples and final products. In Agile, testing in process of sprint development is reviewed by Product Owners only who are well aware of the features outcomes. Not every product review meeting needs to have a Prodman sitting. Prodman can delegate these meeting to product owner and can be a part of major reviews while development. For e,g., after every 2 weeks, product owner will do the review and provide his comments and inform Prodman about the progress and a prodman can himself come for review in every 1 or 2 months as per their availability and the criticality of stage in which product is at that moment.
Coordinate Product Launch - Bring all teams together to launch the product successfully and on time. Ensuring timely Product Launch and Defining Go to Market Strategy along with Marketing team is also a major responsibility of a Product Manager.
Track Product Performance - Gather customer feedback to track the product’s performance and make further improvements. Also keep doing the competitor research to see what the ideas they are working and is there anything you can learn from them to make your product better.
Comentários