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The product manager is responsible for delivering a product to market that addresses a market need and represents a viable business opportunity. A key component of the product manager’s job includes ensuring that the product supports the company’s overall strategy and goals. Although the product manager is ultimately responsible for managing the product throughout its life cycle (conception through end-of-life), he receives assistance throughout this process from specialists such as designers, developers, quality assurance engineers, supply chain and operations experts, manufacturing engineers, product marketers, program managers, sales engineers, professional services engineers, and more.

The terms engineer and engineering are typically used for hardware products. In the software world, the terms used are typically developer and development. In this book, both terms are used interchangeably except when it relates specifically to a particular product type.

Whereas engineering is responsible for building the tangible product, product management is responsible for the whole product. The whole product is what the customer buys, and it includes everything that augments the product, from warranties, support, and training to peripherals, third-party applications, and value added partner services. The whole product encompasses the entire customer experience.

In most cases, the description of product manager covers an incredibly wide range of skills. However, most product manager roles have several key components:

❯❯ Domain expertise: Very often, this market is why your company hired you. The fact that you know the customers and the business is the main reason you’re now a product manager.

❯❯ Business expertise: People say that the product manager is the CEO of the product. Though that may or may not be true, making sure the company is generating a profit is usually involved. You need to have a suite of business skills to keep your product profitable.

❯❯ Leadership skills: Many people within your company are looking to you for guidance. If you don’t have leadership skills under your belt, you need to develop them quickly. Chapters 17 and 18 give you more details on developing leadership skills.

❯❯ Operational ability: Product managers need to dive deep into the many nitty-gritty details needed to manage a product: for example, creating part numbers or updating a spreadsheet. Sometimes you can get someone else to do these tasks, but many times you have to be responsible for them.

Keep in mind that the amount of time you spend on a particular part of your job varies depending on whether you sell to businesses or consumers. The terminology used here is business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C). The type of product you manage also determines how much time you spend on different tasks. A software product manager is often very focused on customer journeys and user experience. A hardware product manager may spend a lot more time on supply chain issues and forecasting. As you change from one product to another, be mindful of the critical success factors that face you in this position.

Checking out the job description

Why refer you to the job description? It’s where your boss has put in all her hopes and expectations of what you’ll bring to the role. And companies often define product management differently. You may see items that are usually part of project management, sales, or user experience that are included.

Because you’re providing product direction, expect to see a reference to product strategy in your role. If it isn’t there, you may actually be in a junior role or managing a very customized B2B product where your customers are more likely to dictate your every move. If neither of these is the case, your company may not understand the benefits of strong product management. You aren’t alone. According to the 280 Group’s 2013 LinkedIn survey of product management professionals, 75 percent of executives didn’t understand product management. And Actuation’s team performance survey confirmed that about half of companies had a poorly defined product management role.

If this is your situation, talk to your manager about the lack of responsibility for strategy as discussed in this chapter. In some rare instances, strategy isn’t part of the product management role.

Primary responsibilities of a product manager

Here are some bullet points you may find in your job description:

❯❯ Defines the product vision, strategy, and road map.

❯❯ Gathers, manages, and prioritizes market/customer requirements.

❯❯ Acts as the customer advocate articulating the user’s/buyer’s needs.

❯❯ Works closely with engineering, sales, marketing, and support to ensure business case and customer satisfaction goals are met.

❯❯ Has technical product knowledge or specific domain expertise.

❯❯ Defines what to solve in the market needs document, where you articulate the valuable market problem you’re solving along with priorities and justification for each part of the solution.

❯❯ Runs beta and pilot programs during the qualify phase with early-stage products and samples (see Chapter 13 for a detailed discussion of this phase).

❯❯ Is a market expert. Market expertise includes understanding the reasons customers purchase products. This means a deep understanding of the competition and how customers think of and buy your product

❯❯ Acts as the product’s leader within the company.

❯❯ Develops the business case for new products, improvements to existing products, and business ventures.

❯❯ Develops positioning for the product.

❯❯ Recommends or contributes information in setting product pricing. This point isn’t true in all industries, especially insurance; however, an awareness of competitive pricing is part of what companies expect you to provide as part of the pricing decision.

Other common responsibilities

Depending on your product line, you can also be asked to do the following tasks.

❯❯ Work with external third parties to assess partnerships and licensing opportunities

❯❯ Identify the market opportunities

❯❯ Manage profit and loss

❯❯ Research products that complement your product

❯❯ Review product requirements and specification documents

❯❯ Make feature versus cost versus schedule trade-offs

❯❯ Ensure sales and service product training occurs

❯❯ Develop product demos or decide on product demo content

❯❯ Be the central point of contact for the product inside the company

❯❯ Partner closely with product marketing

Common deliverables

Product managers drive action throughout the company mainly through written documents supported by presentations. Here is a list of the most common documents that you may be asked to create – be aware that each company has their own specific list and terminology:

❯❯ Business case

❯❯ Market needs document

❯❯ Product road maps

❯❯ White papers, case studies, product comparisons, competitor analysis, and user stories

Required experience and knowledge

Product managers call on a wide range of skills and have a broad set of business and product experiences to call on. Here is a list of what managers look for in hiring product managers:

❯❯ Demonstrated success in defining and launching products that meet and exceed business objectives

❯❯ Excellent written and verbal communication skills

❯❯ Subject matter expertise in the particular product or market – this should include specific industry or technical knowledge

❯❯ Excellent teamwork skills

❯❯ Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams without formal authority

Pinpointing product management on the organizational chart

Product management can report into various parts of the organization. In tech-heavy roles, it sometimes reports into engineering. In more consumer-oriented companies, it sometimes reports into marketing. More and more, companies recognize that a synthesis of what the customer wants and what the business can provide is best placed at the highest level of an organization. So VPs of product management now often report into the CEO or the executive manager for a division. See Figure 2-1 for an organization chart example.

© 2017, 280 Group LLC. All Rights Reserved.

FIGURE 2-1: A typical organization chart.

If you’re part of an organization that doesn’t understand product management well, it may not be able to operate as effectively. This isn’t a theoretical difference. A study by Aegis Resources Inc. found that when a company empowers product managers, products get to market 50 percent faster. That’s a lot of profit left on the table.

You may need to start educating your co-workers as to the best way to take advantage of product management. There are resources available on the 280 Group website (www.280group.com) that help you in transforming how your company can best take advantage of product managers to grow their business.

Drafting your product management manifesto

Someone once compared product management to refrigerator function. You don’t notice when it’s running well, but when it’s broken, things start to stink. Remember that when you do your job well, the company hums much better – even if it doesn’t know you’re the source of the humming. There is less confusion and more direction. Getting to function this well comes from really knowing how you fit in and how you drive your vision forward. With this idea in mind, try to draft your own product management manifesto. This document is your guiding philosophy on how you do your job and provide direction.

Here are a few guidelines:

❯❯ The Is have it. This manifesto guides your actions. Start each sentence with “I”: “I am committed to… ,” “I have a plan… ,” “I will do… ,” and so on.

❯❯ It’s a 360-degree view. List all your stakeholders and determine what your stance is for each of them.

❯❯ Balance is key. The one constant in being a product manager is that it involves a lot of trade-offs. Make sure you have a plan for communicating how you will decide between two courses of action. For example, “When in doubt, I will focus on validating my opinion using customer feedback.”

❯❯ Know your decision-making plan. In fact, the entire decision-making process underpins your success. How will you make a decision? For example, write “I will be open to many opinions before I make a final decision.”

The manifesto should be no longer than one page and, because you’re giving direction to other people, provide the philosophical support for how you approach your job. See Figure 2-2 for a sample of a product manager’s manifesto.

© 2006–2017, 280 Group LLC. All Rights Reserved.

FIGURE 2-2: Sample product manager manifesto. (May be downloaded at https://280group.com/landing-pages/signup/)