Product Management is balancing the user experience, technology, and business needs of a product.
Wait…what is a product?
While there are Product Managers for physical products, like hardware or cars or machinery, this post focuses on digital Product Management. Digital products are goods or services that exist in a digital format, e.g. software, eBooks, and social media platforms.
So what do you do with products?
Product Managers don’t have any special authority over the user experience, tech, or business teams but instead focus on building the right thing at the right time for the right people. This means we know why the product exists, what problems it solves for whom, and what the business value is for it. Armed with this information, we partner with those above mentioned teams to formulate strategies on making the product successful. Sometimes this means adding (or removing) features, changing the design, adding things like membership or loyalty programs, or making the experience faster, more secure, or better in the eyes of the customer.
Part of setting a strategy is determining the goals, defining the success metrics, and motivating our teams. Ultimately Product Managers are responsible for the outcome of our partners’ work, or the success of the product.
Product Management will mean something different to everybody, depending on what type of product you work on, what type of industry you work in, and what type of background you have. Anybody can be a Product Manager, but the most common backgrounds are business or tech (computer science, IT, etc.). Other successful backgrounds for Product Managers include UX designers and customer service leaders. Still others include teachers, social workers, scientists, lawyers, and real estate agents, because the truth is that literally anybody can be a Product Manager. It doesn’t matter what your degree was in (or if you even have a degree); what matters is how you approach a problem.
At its heart, Product Management is about problem solving.
How do Product Managers problem solve?
Imagine you need to find a place to live. You would start with a pretty large problem: needing shelter. You recognize this is a big problem to solve, so it is worth pursuing. Then, you go about finding the best solution to that problem by asking yourself a series of questions and determining the pros/cons of each possibility: should you rent or buy? Is this neighborhood better than that one? How much space do you need, and for what reasons (kitchen to cook in, bedroom to sleep in, etc.)? You might decide to move to a new neighborhood, and after trying it out you decide you don’t want to stay living there and so start the process all over again with a new neighborhood when your lease is up. The point of your quest is twofold: to find shelter and to be happy in that shelter. If you have a family, you have to consider their wants and needs as well, and then weigh all of those factors against each other when making your decision.
That, in a nutshell, is Product Management. Every product has a customer, so you start by identifying that customer’s needs, wants, and opportunities. You do market research and user research to learn about them and see how they use the product. You try something new with an experiment (e.g. 20% of customers see Experience A while 80% of customers see Experience B) and if customers don’t like it, tweak a design and then try again. You do all of this in the pursuit of a goal, like increased sales or different product usage. You stay focused on the customer and their goals so you can make the product successful and it continues to be funded by the company you work for. You use goals and success metrics to keep iterating on the product and know whether or not you are on the right track.
Product Management takes time to show success, and a lot of focus and prioritization, but is one of the most rewarding careers in tech that literally anybody can do. All of the job-related and technical skills can be taught. Successful Product Managers are naturally curious, humble, and focused and bring these skills to a product in pursuit of customer delight.
Is that all?
Nope. That was just the tip of the Product Management iceberg. There are a lot of nuances and “yes, but…” scenarios, which makes it an exciting career because every Product Management role is different. Take accounting, for example, where numbers are always numbers and math always functions the same. This is true in any industry, in any level of accounting. But an Associate Product Manager at Company X with a background in customer service will have a completely different approach to Product Management than a Director of Product at Company Y with an MBA and background in Data Analytics. They will have different definitions, different expectations, and different experiences with strategies, roadmaps, and user stories. This is the beauty and art of Product Management, which allows us to learn from every new role and company in order to be better problem solvers.
Keep an eye out for my next article, where I break down the major skills of Product Management and how you can learn them.