What is Product Management? What does a Product Manager do?

(PM refers to Product Manager for this blog*)

Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Amazon, Flipkart, Facebook, Intel, etc., the list goes on. What do you think is common in all these companies? One thing that unites all these companies is us. Each of these are working day in and out to provide us with their best products to make our lives easier. Each time they come up with innovative products to meet our requirements.

Product Management is strategically driving the design, development, market launch, and continued support and improvement of a company’s product. A product manager has to form a strategy and vision for a product by analysing the customers’ requirements.

A Product Manager is responsible for the product’s overall success. He has to interact with all the teams, i.e. UX, Technical, Business, marketing, etc. and keep modifying things and suggesting changes to ensure that the product meets its strategic and financial goals.

The quality of the product is something that is of utmost importance. Product Managers act as a connecting link among all the teams taking care of different aspects of the product. A product manager needs to think about what customers need and what is technically and financially possible for the company to generate as much profit as possible.

The role of product managers differs with varying companies as each company works on different products with different goals making the role a bit company dependent. Let’s talk more about it.

Roles of a Product Manager(PM)

1. Setting Vision: A PM has to set a vision, i.e. he should know the goal of their product. Who is the target audience? What needs do they have? In a broad sense, he acts as an advocate for the users keeping in mind the goals of the stakeholders.
2. Market Research and Analysis: Requirements of the people or the response of the consumers for different products and the relation between different things affecting the product directly or indirectly can be understood by market research and analysis.
3. Design Ideation: This requires brainstorming to come up with ideas for the design of the product so that it is liked by the consumers as well as serves the goal for which it is designed.
4. Product Development: This refers to all the phases involved in making the product from ideas to reality. This is the whole journey of a product from its ideation to its actual model, i.e. entire evolution of the product.
5. Positioning and Branding: Quality is the king in the market, and linking quality to a brand to build trust in consumers’ minds is one thing that every company aims for. A PM sometimes is responsible for handling this also.
6. Documentation: A PM should know how to document things? It helps a lot to keep track of all the work that needs to be done and what has already been done? This also helps a lot to keep everything going at the right pace.
7. Product Growth and strategic solutions: A PM also plans the Product Growth strategy with the teams to attract consumers and make their product a great success. No matter how great a product you make, If you cannot reach the consumers and convince them, everything goes in vain.
8. Competitive Analysis: Before starting to work on a product, a team has to make sure about the availability of alternate solutions to the problem already existing in the market. They have to make sure that they are always making something that is new or making already existing things more efficient. Then only their product is going to stand out.
9. Prototyping and Execution: This involves building a prototype and then taking an initial user evaluation to improve the product according to user experience.
10. Product Launch: It is evident from the name that a PM also takes care of the product’s launch and makes sure that it reaches the target audience.

So these mainly comprise the roles a PM does in a company. A PM is not necessarily required to do each of these tasks, and his work comprises a few above skills, which depend upon the type of company and its requirements.

Depending upon the companies, a PM can broadly be of four types- A technical PM, Design PM, Growth PM, and Business PM. This classification is more evident in large-cap companies which are well established, unlike startups where their roles are pretty flexible.

One exciting thing about the role is that it demands a wide variety of skills. Something like Jack of all trades as basic knowledge of many fields is helpful. Let me explain to you.

A PM is a Psychologist as he has to understand the thinking process of consumers to make the best use of the resources. He is a detective as he has to keep searching for better ideas and solutions to existing problems. A coach, a diplomat, a curious child, etc., all these, when combined, make a Product Manager. Doesn’t this sound interesting?

So this was all about what a Product Manager does. We hope for a better future.

If you liked it do check out our series on Finance blogs where we have briefly described What is Finance and Why is it important? then we gave a detailed description of the Top 5 Career options in finance in India. and also of What does a financial analyst do?. And to know about best resources to learn about finance check out the Top 8 Skills required for a career in the Finance industry along with best resources available.