Careers in Product Management - Different Aspects of Product Management

Different Aspects of Product Management

Product management is a fairly nuanced field, and the role of a PM varies across industries and companies. For instance, being a product manager is very different between a startup and a well-established corporation. The job requires different approaches in a B2C environment and a B2B environment. An outbound PM is quite distinct from an inbound PM. Lastly, a program manager has a role that is completely different from a product manager.

You need to be clear on all the above-mentioned scenarios to fulfil your role competently. Let’s understand them in detail.

The role of a product manager varies according to the context of the product.

1. At a large company, you have a more specialised role, while in a startup, you have to put on various mantles, such as designer or project manager, to launch your product successfully.
2. For a B2C product, you can get direct user feedback to improve your product, whereas, for a B2B product, you need to spend time in the B2B environment to understand pain points and workflow issues.
3. A program manager has no authority over the product; he/she works only on particular offerings. On the other hand, a product manager has authority over, and is responsible for, all offerings of the product.
4. An outbound PM shapes the product communication across all marketing channels, whereas an inbound PM is responsible for all communication with the internal teams.

Careers in Product Management - Soft Skills of a Product Manager

Soft Skills of a Product Manager

Along with the hard skills, you also need to foster in yourself a number of soft skills. This helps you manage all the teams well and, in the end, ensure that utmost attention and effort is paid towards building and improving the product.

The following soft skills help you perform your role as a PM to the best of your ability:

1. Leading without authority: In order to collaborate with various departments, you need to build credibility to earn the respect and confidence of the internal stakeholders, without being domineering.
2. Communicating effectively: Clarity of thought enables you to communicate with different stakeholders like internal departments, senior management, as well as the users of your product.
3. Negotiating: Balancing the needs of the product with the schedules and priorities of different teams requires carefully honed negotiation skills. You also need to keep in mind that the success of the product is shared with all the team members, while you alone need to accept its failure.
4. Pushing back requirements: Developing a product means prioritising certain ideas and tasks above others — this means saying no to a lot of good ideas that may not fit into your vision. You need to establish a framework to ensure that time and resources are spent on building a product that users actually want.

Careers in Product Management - Hard Skills of a Product Manager

Hard Skills of a Product Manager

 

As a product manager, the ultimate responsibility for the product’s launch and success rests on your shoulders. You need to collaborate with various departments, such as design and engineering, to get the job done. For this, you need to inculcate a number of hard skills that help you understand your product better and manage it in an efficient manner.

A product manager has to be a cross-functional leader who has to involve himself/herself in all aspects of the product — from operations and analytics, engineering and design, to legal and other departments of the company. Your role involves making data-driven decisions, user-behaviour driven decisions, as well as marketing-driven decisions.

The most important hard skills you need as a PM are:

1. User experience design: A knowledge of user experience design ensures that you visualise a unique and usable product that fulfils the expectations of the user.
2. Technology: An understanding of the technical aspects of your product will enable you to leverage technology to solve any problem that may arise.
3. Data understanding: If your company doesn’t rely on data, you need to introduce a data-driven culture as it can help you understand many aspects of your product’s performance, as well as validate any instincts you may have in this regard.
4. Business sense: You need to decide where to invest your team’s time and resources and accordingly build a product roadmap that leads to success and profitability.