Foolish Assumptions
In writing this book, we made a few assumptions about you. We assume that you have some business knowledge but not necessarily any particular technical knowledge of a subject or product area. We assume that if you need to have this technical knowledge, you have acquired or will acquire it elsewhere (and we let you know when you’ll likely need to get outside information).
In an ideal world, product managers would all be deep technical experts and have MBAs and business backgrounds. However, that isn’t the real world. We assume that as you grow as a product manager, you’ll develop your own philosophy of product management, create your own versions of our tools, and innovate and share with others in the profession. Ultimately, you may aspire to help grow the next generation of product managers, resulting in more great products available in the world.
Icons Used in This Book
Throughout this book, you find icons that alert you to information that you need to know:
Beyond the Book
Downloading the Product Management LifeCycle Toolkit: In addition to the great content in the book you’re reading right now, the 280 Group has included with your purchase a single-user license for the Product Management LifeCycle Toolkit at no extra charge. This collection of templates and tools goes along with the book and allows you to produce more effective documents more quickly. In addition, there are completed sample versions of these documents that you can use as a guideline for how to actually complete them. Go to www.280group.com/toolkit and use the coupon code PMDUMMIES to get your complimentary copy.
Also available online are some quick answers to some basic product management elements. To view this book’s Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Product Management For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.
Where to Go from Here
If you are new to product management or investigating it for the first time, the best place to start is in Part 1 of the book. Read it from start to finish.
If you already have some experience in product management, we still recommend starting at Part 1 to refresh what you have learned and to find information that may be new to you. If you are facing immediate challenges, find the chapter that most closely addresses your issue.
Part 1
Getting Started with Product Management
Discover what product management is all about and what critical role it takes in delivering successful products to market.
Find out about the wide range of job functions you’ll be working with and bring to your team.
Understand the complete process of bringing a product to market.
Determine what information you need to compile to keep a product on track to achieve market success.
Chapter 1
Welcome to the World of Product Management
IN THIS CHAPTER
❯❯ Grasping the vital part the product manager plays in product success
❯❯ Previewing typical product management responsibilities
As a product manager, you have one of the most rewarding, challenging, interesting, difficult, and important jobs in the business industry. You get to step up and be a product leader for everyone on your team and throughout your company while learning how to influence and lead usually without any formal authority or people reporting to you directly. You get to be responsible for every aspect of the product offering and for the overall success and failure of your product. This position provides one of the best training grounds for moving onward and upward into roles like vice president, general manager, and CEO. And if you’re lucky and choose carefully, you get to work with some pretty talented engineering and development teams to create products that delight your customers, make a huge difference in your customers’ lives, and help achieve profits and strategic objectives that propel your company to success.
Understanding the Need for Product Management
The corporate world has recently gained a deep understanding about why product management is the best choice for driving products strategically to ensure companies’ customers are delighted and their businesses are growing. According to Aegis Resources companies that empower product managers are shown to be 50 percent faster to market. And in a 2013 CBS News MoneyWatch article, product management was listed as the fourth most important role in corporations, behind only the CEO, general managers, and senior executives. You’re part of a select and important crowd.
The benefits of having a great product management organization are hard to ignore:
❯❯ Delivering products that better meet customer needs
❯❯ Increasing revenues and profitability
❯❯ Creating delighted customers who generate positive word-of-mouth referrals
❯❯ Capturing and owning markets long-term as a result of solid product strategy which drives overall company efforts
These are just a few of the benefits. No other group in the company understands all aspects of the business the way that product managers do, and thus they become the central point of responsibility for product success or failure.
Many CEOs started in product management as their training ground. Some notable examples include Marissa Mayer (who started at Google, moved into product management, and became CEO of Yahoo!), Steve Ballmer (who started as a product manager at Proctor & Gamble and became CEO of Microsoft), and Scott Cook (who started as a product and brand manager at Proctor & Gamble and later founded Intuit, the maker of Quicken, Mint, QuickBooks, and Turbo Tax). In fact, the last seven CEOs at Proctor & Gamble started as product managers or brand managers, as they are known in the packaged goods industry.
Recognizing the Critical Role of Project Management
Companies with great product management have a much higher degree of success. But what is product management? The following sections shed some light on what a product manager actually does.
Defining product management
You can think of product management as the function in a company that is ultimately responsible for making sure that every product the company offers to the market is as successful as possible both short-term tactically and long-term strategically. In other words, the buck stops here. You, as a product manager, must own everything about product success. Product managers rarely, if ever, have any formal authority or people reporting to them, so they must lead and influence in subtle yet effective ways.
Serving as a strategic driver for business