❯❯ 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.
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FIGURE 2-1: A typical organization chart.
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.
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FIGURE 2-2: Sample product manager manifesto. (May be downloaded at https://280group.com/landing-pages/signup/)
Comparing Product Management to Other Related Roles
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