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Entrepreneurship

What does a Product Manager do?

Code is the essence of every software product. But clients don’t buy code. All the clients actually want is a solution for their problem.

Every developer and tester from the team adds their brick to the product. But, all their effort can be wasted if a clear objective is not defined and communicated.

Defining the objective and aligning the team around it is the Product Manager’s (PM) job.

What is Product Management?
What is Product Management?

This might sound strange, especially since the product manager doesn’t write the code (except for some sample or demos) and he is neither a people manager (the developers have their own lead engineer, the same for the testing, and support teams).

However, the PM is the one being held accountable for the final product delivered.

A good PM acts more like a facilitator and less like a boss.

His role is to listen (both the client and the team) and synthesize the information for the team, so any member can contribute independently.

Let’s take a specs doc, for example, this can be used by the development team to define the architecture of an application, by the testing team to fins weaknesses and bugs, and by the marketing team to prepare education material for end-users.

A good PM makes sure every team member has all the necessary info to make a good decision, without constantly consulting the PM.

What else does a PM do?

The daily routine of a PM varies a lot. You’ve got days/weeks which you can spend along the support team engaging with customers to better learn their challenges. Or, depending on the product you’re selling, you can even visit customers onsite.

Sometimes, you’ll work a lot along with the design team, iterating on mockups or improving existing parts from the product, based on the user feedback you gathered.

Every now and then, the PM also works closely with the marketing team. You’ll help the team identify, prioritize and deliver new marketing materials or even hold a customer presentation.

TLDR; a PM is an intrapreneur. Any problem which is no clearly owned by one of the other teams mentioned above will be resolved by the PM.

This role requires cross-departmental skills that enable the PM to align the team objectives and support his team member with all the resources they need.

No two snowflakes are the same.

The PM role is different in every company. A 100 employee company runs differently from a 1.000 or 10.000 employee company.

You’ll find a lot of descriptions for this role. Some will seem very complex initially. Don’t get scared, accept the challenge. All companies are looking for employees that want to learn and grow, and the PM role can be full of exciting opportunities for your career.

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