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Most roles have well-defined functions, but product management is definitely not one of them. It has a different meaning in each company, which doesn't help me in deciding what makes a product manager. In order to find this out, I’ve read lots of articles from different product managers, trying to understand what you do, what your problems are and how you see your own roles in the team. Guided by these papers I identified some points that are common in almost all of them.
Understanding customer needs
The first thing that makes a Product Manager is making sure that the right things are done in the right time, and most importantly, making sure that these things are all done in order to create a better product.
Most of you think that it’s critical to identify customer needs, make decisions in favour of them, know your products better than anybody else in the company and also understand its life cycle, see through the whole process and know how to measure the product’s success.
Product Managers always try to find new ways to solve problems when requirements do not meet. You are most definitely enthusiastic and you care about your customers.
Making the team’s life easier
The second thing that most product managers have in common is that they try to ensure that the team works well. Product managers know that in favour of the product they have to take into account not only the customers, but also the internal stakeholders that are involved with the product.
One of your most important tasks is to make the team’s job easier by understanding their workflow, providing them with ideas on how to be more efficient and trying to convince the management if necessary.
Making people feel more comfortable and confident is also a huge part of your job. “My work always came second to theirs, and there was nothing I wouldn’t interrupt for them. The result was a mutual trust and respect.” – says Mark Rabo in his article.
A lot of experienced product managers say that they never write codes, run tests, create marketing campaigns or work on the user interface, they just help the team in creating a good work environment where they can sufficiently perform all these tasks. Of course most of you don’t just serve your teams, but you are proud of them.
Communicating a lot
I think it’s a fact that all product managers communicate a lot. You probably keep in touch with the tech teams, sales, marketing, CTO, CEO and sometimes even with customers.
Communication is the key for you to do your jobs right and it must be the task that takes the most of your time. “Forgetting the (…) so called lunch in between, the product manager rushes to tech team and pleads (…) to them to fix it urgently.” – Amit Goel’s post shows well how much communication is needed and how exhausting this rush could be for the product manager. It is also important that product managers usually work in an environment where technology, business and UX meet.
According to a great article a product manager is a CEO, a coach, an engineer, a janitor, a hammer, a router, a super user, an inventor, a ghost and the product itself, all at the same time.
Strategic way of thinking
Most Product Managers have or at least try to have a strategic way of thinking. They want to build a team that can evolve for a more efficient workflow and better products. The majority of product managers know that they have to communicate the vision and encourage team members to actively participate in developing their own skills and the elements of both the workflow and the product.
So, understanding customer needs, knowing the product better than anyone else, making the team’s life easier, communicating with internal stakeholders in favour of the team and paying attention to the future are probably the basic components of your job as a product manager.
