5 Tips to Get the Advantages of a Product Manager’s Job
What does it mean to be a product manager? Many people think that this is a certain employee whose responsibilities are similar to the job of the project manager. However, this opinion is not the truth.
The author of Hygger.io blog perfectly describes the practical benefits of a product manager and some interesting specialties of this job. Here’re the main ideas from the article:
Product management direction is a huge complex of responsibilities aimed at the formation of a product belonged to a company, its development, support and further launch to markets.
Any product manager is the person who bears responsibility for everything connected with the successful translation of the idea of the product to the reality. A real expert must initially feel whether or not this product will shoot at the market.
In fact, there are no institutions or even master classes offering to make a person a ready-made product manager. Everything must be learned only in the process of work.
What should the real shark of product management be able to do?
Be communicative
A product manager is responsible for establishing a qualified communication between all team members. He/she should be able to build a dialogue with customers, investors, and others involved in the work on the project. It’s also important to be a kind of translator and help groups mix well with each other.
Delegate as a leader
Working on a project is a huge complex of many various activities, and it often happens that product managers take too much on their shoulders to monitor everything related to the business plan. As a result, this does not always (or even rarely) lead to the desired aims, and such a workflow may lead to professional burnout of workers.
Be a real strategist
If it concerns the fate of the project and some decisions that may affect product’s demand in the market, here comes the turn to speak to the product manager.
There are the following decisions that are mostly made by a product manager:
- Choosing a strategy for working on the project in order to achieve the top results (including KPI implementation)
- Comparing the product with its direct and potential competitors in the market
- Offering new products or developing the present production.
Protect against the risks
As a real expert, a product manager must not be afraid to express all his concerns about every decision, because the most important goal is to achieve the best results and receive a real commercial success.
It is necessary to nurture such qualities as self-confidence, intuition and a sense of the particular situation to avoid financial losses and time to waste for the company.
Read professional PM books
Never stop studying new and learning more! Here are some edutainment books related to the product manager’s job:
- Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Team (Richard Banfield)
- Product Management in Practice: A Real-World Guide to the Key Connective Role of the 21st Century (Matt LeMay)
- The Art of Product Management: Lessons from a Silicon Valley Innovator (Rich Mironov)
Be sure: every person can become a product manager. If you are ambitious, love your job and want to meet the level of real mastery in the implementation of projects – do what you are planning and don’t stop.