What do Product Managers do?

Introduction

A product manager is a person who is responsible for the success of a product. They are the bridge between business, engineering and design. Product managers are responsible for understanding what customers want, what they need and how to build that into something that will solve their problem or meet their needs.

What a Product Manager does:

A product manager is responsible for the success of a product. A good PM can be an advocate to the customer, can translate customer feedback into requirements, and can communicate the vision for a product. They need to know their market and customers well, as well as understand how their products fit into the overall ecosystem. But what does this look like in practice?

To start with, there's a lot of communication between your team members and stakeholders outside of just yourself:

• You need to be able to clearly articulate why you made certain decisions (for example: "We're choosing this language because it's easier for developers")

• You also need strong communication skills so that you can relay information about your product in an understandable way (for example: "Our main goal with this feature is X")

  
  

The job of a product manager is to communicate the vision for a product to the engineering and design teams on their product.

The job of a product manager is to communicate the vision for a product to the engineering and design teams on their product. They are responsible for making sure that the end result is something that meets users' needs, and that it works well.

Product managers work with engineers and designers to build new features and improve existing features—but they also have other responsibilities, like determining if products are meeting user goals or not, testing out new ideas before they're built into production code, release planning (basically figuring out when new releases will happen), communicating with customers through surveys or interviews, etc.

They do this by delivering requirements, in the form of user stories or development tasks.

Product managers do this by delivering requirements, in the form of user stories or development tasks.

The first thing to understand about user stories is that they're not requirements. The word “requirements” has a very specific meaning: it refers to everything that must be included in a project, from functionality down to design decisions and technical limitations (e.g., “the app must be able to accept payments through Stripe”). User stories describe only the most important features of a project—those which provide value for users. Other elements are captured by technical tasks (which are described later) or can be left out altogether if they're not critical enough to implement immediately.

To illustrate the difference between user stories and traditional requirements documents, imagine an ecommerce platform with an order management feature that lets shoppers place orders via email or phone calls:

• As an anonymous customer placing an order via email…

• I want a way for my customers to pay me directly so I don't have any fees deducted when they buy things off my website; this will improve conversion rates because people won't need PayPal accounts before buying something online!

  
  

These requirements should be built from customer feedback and market research.

You can build your requirements based on customer feedback. This typically involves conducting interviews with customers and asking them to provide their insights about the existing product or service.

This is a good way to understand what customers want from your products, as well as why they are using them and how they use it. You could also conduct surveys, which will generate quantitative data that you can use for analysis.

You can also analyze analytics data that you have collected over time in order to identify trends and patterns related to user behavior within the app or website, such as:

• What buttons do people click?

• How much time do people spend on each page?

• Which parts of an app/website are used most frequently by users?

  
  

The product manager understands what matters most to customers in their market.

As a product manager, you should understand the market, but more importantly you should know what matters most to customers in that market. This includes understanding their pain points and how they would ideally solve them. It also includes knowing what solutions are already available in the marketplace, how they are being used or not being used effectively and why. Understanding these things means you will be better able to segment your target customer base so that you can speak directly to their needs as well as identify opportunities for innovation based on emerging trends in technology or business practices (e.g., AI).

They define features and prioritize features that offer the biggest benefit for the customer.

Product managers define features from customer feedback, prioritize features based on customer feedback, and prioritize features based on market research. They use data to understand which products have the most value in the market today—and they work with their teams to develop those products even further.

Product managers also spend time analyzing what other companies are doing with their products. If a company has a product that’s successful in the marketplace, you can bet that other companies are going to try to copy them by releasing something similar or trying to improve upon it (this is called “feature creep”). It's up to product managers at these companies to analyze what makes these products so successful and try their best not just replicate those successes but improve on them as well.

Requirements are created using data and insights about the products that customers use today, customer feedback, and data about customer behavior on those products.

You can also use customer research, market research, and user research to gather requirements. Customer research involves talking with customers to learn more about their needs and wants. This helps you understand how your product will be used in the real world. It's important to talk with people who are actually going to use your product—not just people who already do, but those who currently don't use it because they don't know about it yet (this is called "market expansion").

Market research includes studying industry trends and competitor products as well as understanding how business units within an organization make decisions about what features should be included in a new product or feature update. User research looks at how people interact with current versions of a product or service—these behaviors can help provide insights into future development strategy decisions (for example: Do customers prefer mobile app over desktop? Do they like using voice commands?).

Deliverables include wireframes, mockups, and presentation decks.

You will be responsible for developing the product roadmap and managing projects through the entire development lifecycle. You will be responsible for ensuring that the product is delivered on time, within budget, and meets customer expectations. Product managers are typically involved in all aspects of their company’s products including research, strategy development, design, usability testing and marketing communications.

Product managers typically have at least three roles:

• They manage projects that involve multiple stakeholders (for example: customers/partners/developers) across different organizations or locations

• They translate business requirements into specific features that can be implemented by a software development team

• They evangelize new products internally or externally

  
  

Product managers are translators between engineering, design, marketing and customer support

It’s no surprise that the role of product manager is constantly evolving. The job has been around for decades, but only recently have we seen its importance skyrocket.

Product managers are responsible for understanding the needs, wants and desires of customers (and non-customers). They take these insights and create action items for engineering, design and marketing teams to follow in order to deliver something that will resonate with customers. Because there are so many different perspectives on what a good product looks like—from functional specs to interactive prototypes—it’s important that PMs can quickly translate between all those groups while maintaining their focus on delivering value through new features or additional offerings.

Conclusion

This is a lot of information. Product management is not just a job, but also a large responsibility. We hope that this article has helped you understand the ins and outs of product management and what it takes to do the job well. If there’s anything else we can help with don’t hesitate to reach out!