With the explosion of remote jobs since 2020 and the plethora of online learning available at low- or no-cost, many folks are learning about Product Management. Product Management careers have been rising in popularity for the last 10 years or so, though in reality have been around for decades.
Preliminary digging into what it takes to be a Product Manager may leave some disheartened when they read requirements like go-to-market or SQL skills, and they may believe that experience could only be acquired in business school or with a computer science background.
I am passionate about demystifying Product Management because the majority of it can be taught with any professional background and we desperately need more diversity in the industry. Product Managers should be held accountable for doing their job well, not for having a mysterious role. I’ll have more to say about diversifying Product Management talent in a future article, but for now, let’s peel back the curtain and share what Product Managers actually do.
First, the bad news….Product Management means something different to everybody. Roles and responsibilities differ widely, depending on the team, the industry, and the company.
Now, the good news: Product Management means something different to everybody. Roles and responsibilities differ widely, depending on the team, the industry, and the company.
The truth is, Product Management is subjective. What a Product Manager actually does differs in every team. This can be seen as bad news because it makes it harder to understand, but I prefer to frame it as good news because it means your options for becoming a Product Manager are endless. Now more than ever, applicants have the freedom to find a role that fits them and complements their skills. Don’t be disheartened or disappointed when a job description looks like too many requirements or doesn’t feel right; just look for another that does.
What a Product Manager actually does
With all that being said, Product Management can really be boiled down to one common theme across every team, industry, and company: solving problems.
Product Management is about problem solving.
Broadly speaking, digital Product Management focuses on making software better for customers while pursuing a business goal. Product Managers do this by researching customers or potential customers of their product, partnering with engineering/data/design teams to improve the product as needed, and sharing the business impact of these updates throughout the company. Here’s a real world example:
Team Awesome is Product Patty, Designer Derrick, Engineer Erin, and Business Betty. Product Patty learns that their customers struggle with onboarding because the welcome screens are confusing. This results in customers giving up before they actually buy the product. She talks this over with her team and they come up with a goal: reduce the percentage of customers who give up by having a smoother process that customers will enjoy and lead them to purchasing the product.
Derrick and Erin partner on designing and building new welcome screens for the product, and together with Patty they launch it to customers as a new product experience. After a few weeks, Patty runs a report that shows fewer customers are giving up before making a purchase, which leads to an increase in the percentage of purchases made by new customers. She shares these updates with the team, and Betty shares this report with a business leadership team as a reason to give Team Awesome more funding.
That was a simplified example of Product Management, but hopefully gives a glimpse into how a Product Manager contributes to success.
Here’s a deeper dive into how Patty did it:
Product Patty’s job is to know who her customers are and how they interact with the product. She does this by doing the following:
- Talking with the company’s customer service team to get information on what frustrates customers
- Researching customer demographics based on product signup information
- Talking directly to customers via surveys, focus groups, and user interviews to understand their feelings, motivations, and pain points on using the product
Using this research, Patty discovers 5 big problems that are blocking product purchases and making customers frustrated with the product. She shares all of this with Team Awesome, along with her hypothesis on what the measurable result of fixing each problem could be. Patty recommends starting with the biggest problem first — the one that affects the most customers and has the biggest potential impact on their company revenue.
As mentioned, this is a simplified example of Product Management. On some teams, Patty would partner more with a User Experience (UX) or Design team to get this research. On a different team, Patty may lean heavier into data research by running SQL queries within the product. On yet a different team, Patty could partner with 4 other teams that all own part of the onboarding experience, and together come up with shared goals and work to improve the customer experience. This is what I meant earlier when I said Product Management is different for every team and every company. Product Managers can own all of or part of a product, e.g. the membership rewards program or the homepage design.
Product Management Teams
Product Managers work as part of a team, usually with some combination of engineer/designer/data scientist, and guide the success of a product by prioritizing the right problems to work on at the right time for the right people. Often they have experience in some aspect of product development, like being former designers, or they could come from a customer service or research team. Product Managers rarely do the actual updates; they don’t code or design, though they should have an understanding of these skills. What Product Managers do is identify the customer and business problems to solve and work with their team to improve the product. Here are some of my favorite Product Manager metaphors:
- Basketball coach — not on the court, but creating plays that let each talented player do their best work to win the game
- Orchestra director — experience playing 1 or 2 instruments, but focuses on making a beautiful sound by leading the musicians
- Chef — wanting to make a great meal and needing to determine which ingredients and what amounts would be best together
Hopefully this was a helpful intro into what Product Managers actually do. In my next article, I’ll break down the natural and learned skills that make a successful Product Manager and share resources on how to hone those.