Every company needs a product team, and every product team needs a great PM to guide them through the process. This article explains what it takes to be a successful product manager, including how to identify key traits and how to build trust with your team. You can also check out our blog article for more resources on what makes a good Product Manager.
As the product manager, you are responsible for how and what your product is designed to do. That sounds easy enough, but it can be difficult knowing the right way to react in certain situations.
It’s important to understand that as a product manager, you aren’t just designing products for the sake of it. Instead, you are designing software that will solve a customer’s problem in the most efficient way possible.
It’s your job to know everything from user research to analytics so that your team knows how best to design a product for your target customers. If this sounds like something you would enjoy doing, read on! Here we’ll cover everything you need to know as a new or aspiring product manager.
What does a Product Manager Do?
As a product manager, you are responsible for how and what your product is designed to do. That sounds easy enough, but it can be difficult knowing the right way to react in certain situations.
It’s important to understand that as a product manager, you aren’t just designing products for the sake of it. Instead, you are designing software that will solve a customer’s problem in the most efficient way possible.
It’s your job to know everything from user research to analytics so that your team knows how best to design a product for your target customers. If this sounds like something you would enjoy doing, read on! Here we’ll cover everything you need to know as a new or aspiring product manager.
What do you need to become a product manager?
The most important thing to consider when jumping into product management is your passion for the field. If you aren’t excited to wake up each day and learn something new, then you’re going to struggle.
As a product manager, you don’t just design products you design the customer’s experience. That means you need to understand your customers and their problems like an expert. If you can solve a customer’s problem, then you have a product that will solve their problem at a higher level. So, what do you need to become a product manager?
1. Passion for design
Product managers need to understand what design means and how to apply it to their products.
2. Interest in analytics
As a product manager, you’ll be diving into analytics to understand how customers interact with your product. You’ll want to make sure you’re interested in learning this side of product management.
3. Keen understanding of your business
As a product manager, you’ll be designing products that solve the customer’s problem. To do that, you’ll need a keen understanding of your business. This can come from working as an engineer or having an economics degree.
4. Communication skills
As a product manager, you’ll need to understand both your engineering team and other departments inside your company. This means being able to both communicate with different people and allow others to communicate with you.
5. User Research
One of the first things you’ll want to do as a product manager is to conduct user research. This is a great way to get to know your users, understand their problems and find out if your product will solve those problems.
Experian Marketing’s product manager, Amiya Sinha, says that they want to “understand the pain points our users are experiencing and understand what they want to accomplish with our product.”
This research can be done in a variety of ways, but it’s important to remember that you want to talk to your users and get them to actually use your product.
You don’t want to just ask them questions — you want them to use your product and give you feedback. You can do this by building out a prototype or making mockups of your product. You’ll want to make sure that your mockups are relatable and will allow your users to provide feedback. This can be done in person or over email.
6. Defining the problem your product will solve
Once you have your user research data, you’ll want to define the problem your product will solve. This will help you decide what features your product needs to have.
It can also help you decide what the different paths are for your product. For example, a web-based tool might decide to focus on a variety of different problems and let customers decide what’s most important for them.
As a product manager, you don’t want to force a solution. Instead, you want to make sure that your product solves the customer’s problem as efficiently as possible.
7. Deciding on which tools to use
Once you know what your problem is and what your product will be designed to do, you’ll want to look into the tools you want to use to achieve your product goals.
While there are many tools out there that can help you manage your product, it can be tempting to try and use them to manage the entire product team. However, it’s important to remember that you are the one responsible for the product design.
You’ll want to make sure that you have time for product management and don’t try to do it all on top of your engineering and design teams.
Key Takeaway
As a product manager, you are responsible for how and what your product is designed to do. This can be difficult, but it can also be rewarding. You need to have a passion for design, be interested in analytics and have a keen understanding of your business.
