What is the Main Role of a Product Manager

What Is Product Management?

Product Management focuses on developing or bringing new products to market. A customer-friendly product is the starting point of the process, which concludes with an evaluation of its viability.

Product management mixes marketing, business, and product creation. Research shows that product management is crucial to increase profits by 34.2 percent.

Product management is overseen by a product manager. To be correct, the project manager is the role. Product development is one aspect of the product life cycle that project managers are in charge of.

Product managers are in charge of overseeing a product from conception through launch. They must also focus on business value and customer satisfaction. You can read the full article comparing product managers and project managers.

Further information about the duties and roles of product managers will be provided later. Let's now look at the life cycle of product management.

Key Activities And Product Management

Tasks in product management might be strategic or tactical. Product management is a complex process.

• Vision improvement,
• Customer comprehension,
• Strategy creation
• Product creation,
• Sales and marketing
• Monitoring metrics

Each stage may contain both inbound and outside activities. The product manager supervises the fulfillment of all activities, but not all.

Inbound Activities: focus on product development. These consist of testing and launch, as well as creating a vision and plan.

Outbound Activities: concentrate on a product's sales or promotion. This covers marketing, sales, and customer feedback analysis.

To better grasp the entire process, let's go over each stage of product management one at a time.

Vision Development

Product management includes a crucial component called product vision. One could relate the vision to a road. It serves as both a sign and a waypoint.

It is the final product's vision and the path to get there. This is where strategy development starts with concept management as a team discusses potential products, even though it has yet to be a strategy for product development.

You can either create the vision during brainstorming or use a backlog to help you.

The vision and objectives are established by a product manager. A clear product vision can respond to the following inquiries:

1. What are the personas (personas) for the product?
2. What problems will this product solve?
3. What is the best way to measure the success of a product?

Market Research And Understanding Customers

Data gathering and analyzing data about the market and potential customers is a component of market research. It includes evaluating competitors, comparing products, and determining the target market.

For a product to be successful, it is crucial to understand your target market. 76% of customers want businesses to pay attention to their needs. Additionally, 84% of companies that paid attention to customer experience reported higher sales.

As we've already discussed, product managers collaborate with product marketing managers to conduct in-depth research to understand prospective clients better.

There are many perspectives on this process:

To create user personas, you need to describe fictional characters who can be interested in your future products.

In essence, this is a picture of your ideal customer. Your user persona can include details like gender, age, education level, financial goals, typical issues, spending habits, and more.

You can design and provide the most in-demand product if you are aware of what your customers require. Based on their needs, customers can be split into four major types.

Knowing your clients' psychology is essential to understanding their behavior. This entails learning how your target audience thinks and makes decisions, researches, is influenced by their environment, and reacts to marketing initiatives, among other things.

Market research can be carried out by a business (primary) or a third party (secondary). Secondary research refers to information already created and is available online, in publications, statistical databases, etc.

Primary research can be customized to the demands of the company. Either qualitative or quantitative data may be used.

Qualitative research is focused on the identification of problems and pertinent issues. Personal interviews, focus groups, and group surveys are all included in this. Data gathering and statistical analysis form the core of quantitative market research.

Product managers can connect with a larger audience and get comprehensive data. On the other hand, qualitative research sheds light on a situation while highlighting wants, needs, and potential pitfalls.

Market research is essential for new product development at both the execution and marketing, and sales stages. It helps companies understand customers' needs and create a strategy to make a successful product.

Strategy Development

After defining the vision and understanding the market, you can formulate a product strategy. A picture is a description of the product's goals.

At the same time, a method describes how to get there and establishes vital milestones. For all team members contributing to a project, the plan needs to be understandable and practical.

A product strategy is a plan that defines the key features and needs of the product. The strategy for a product is laid out in a written roadmap form.

As a result, a team can oversee the work at every stage. A roadmap is a tool that provides a team with structure, along with a timeframe and defined actions. Also, it demonstrates the product development's vision, objectives, and present status.

Suppose you want to understand more about strategic routes, their different sorts, and how to design them. In that case, you can also read our article on the subject.

All team members have visual guidance in the form of a clear roadmap. The roadmap should display the present situation and the following phases regardless of structure.

There are many different types of roadmap templates. The formats change depending on the components of product development and how many products you have (a single product roadmap or numerous product roadmaps) (goal-oriented or feature-oriented).

The elements of a roadmap must be arranged in the order in which they were implemented. Roadmaps might be internal or external.

A plan of action within. The internal roadmap of a corporation is applied. The company's vision, short- and long-term goals, and any relevant processes are displayed in this document.

Teams working on various stages of product creation may keep track of the time and be aware of upcoming events thanks to this. A product manager or CEO will use an internal roadmap to track development.

Outside route. External roadmap for products. This is often less complex for prospective clients, investors, stakeholders, and other stakeholders.

When creating the roadmap, product managers have a crucial responsibility: prioritization. The objectives, aims, and actions should be specified in the order of importance.

The product manager must inform the product teams and stakeholders about the strategy after it has been defined.

Top Product Managers need to be able to concentrate on stakeholders and customers at the same time. While a product manager must always have the client in mind, maintaining positive working relationships with stakeholders is just as crucial.

The creation of a product can be significantly influenced by stakeholders. They could shorten the deadline or lower the budget.

Stakeholders can recommend features that they feel are important and necessary but that users don't need. The product manager is in charge of explaining strategy to stakeholders to make sure they comprehend the vision.

Also Read: Top Tools For Product Managers

Execution And Testing

Throughout the execution phase, a product team develops the product. They create new products or add functionality to ones that already exist.

Product development, internal and external testing, and feedback implementation are all part of this stage. A product manager oversees and participates in the execution phase.

Product development. Technical specifications, prototypes, and mockups are the first steps in product development.

The UX team often handles these tasks. Technical spec authoring, however, might involve a product manager. The primary duties of a product manager are to identify user demands and convey them to the project manager and development team.

To do this, focus groups and interviews with prospective clients are held. These activities help product managers prioritize which features are most important and which ones are not.

They produce paperwork for products, such as Product Requirement Documents (PRD) and Functional Specifications Documents (FSD). Further details regarding best practices for software documentation are available on our dedicated page.

External testing and MVP release. Defining the minimal viable product (MVP) and ensuring that it serves its purpose falls to product managers.

A product manager develops a feedback mechanism to gather feedback and then modifies the product specifications in response to customer feedback. Customer feedback is cited as the best source of ideas by 60% of product managers.

One of the most common methods of evaluation is A/B testing. This procedure seeks to pinpoint the functions that enhance customer engagement or are most valuable to customers.

They develop testing scenarios and keep track of the outcomes in cooperation with a UX specialist and a product manager. The project manager or development team is then informed of any modifications.

UAT is used to test the usability of a product at different stages. UAT allows you to examine how users interact with the product and find problems.

It also verifies adherence to organizational requirements. Product managers frequently develop connections to ensure that prospective consumers are forthright about a product's usability.

The testing results are used to analyze customer feedback and user reactions. The product manager must convey the analysis results to the project manager so that the developers can either get the software ready for release or make changes to it.

Marketing And Sales

It's now time to launch the product once it is complete. At this point, plans for marketing and launch are completed, and distribution training is given to sales staff.

These are the three most essential elements of a product launch.

• Through a variety of marketing campaigns and promotional activities, raising consumer awareness.
• Based on market rivalry and product value, the pricing strategy is decided.
• Select the ideal launch window while considering client readiness, current goods' performance, competition launches, and other factors.

Pre-launch activities are a crucial component of a comprehensive marketing strategy. Before releasing, they try to generate interest in your product.

Pre-launch promotions, media channel advertising, and the creation of excellent content with SEO considerations are a few of these. Each of them must specifically target the client segment discovered through market analysis.

The product manager will develop an operating strategy that tracks the product's expansion on the market. We will discuss this procedure and offer particular metrics in the next section.

Suppose the product manager does not hold the post of the product marketing manager. In that case, they may have extra duties in startups or smaller businesses. Some of the roles that the product manager might play in this scenario include the following:

• Creating use case and business documentation
• Setting up the distribution models, launch strategy, and other specifics.
• Specify the market you are targeting
• Determining the pricing strategy
• Establishing the necessary tools and sales assistance.

Senior executives in larger businesses, such as the Sales and marketing departments, frequently collaborate on these operations.

Monitoring Product Metrics

The product manager monitors the development of the product and evaluates data to assess its effectiveness. We have an article that will give you extensive information if you want to learn more about critical product management KPIs.

There are several ways to organize these metrics:

• Monthly recurring revenue, which displays the money from the product throughout a month, is one of the financial measures used to determine payment.
• User Engagement is measured by metrics such as Session Duration, which measures the length of product usage.
• Metrics showing user interests, such as retention rates, determine how many customers remained devoted over time.
• The average number of sessions per user, which reveals how frequently a website is accessed, is one metric used to gauge product popularity.
• Customer satisfaction with the product is gauged by user satisfaction.

  The possibility that a product will be recommended to others is indicated by the Net Promoter Score.

Choosing metrics to track and collect data is not sufficient. To impact decisions in the future, it is crucial to analyze the data and derive insightful conclusions from it.

The management team will use these results to determine how the product is performing and whether any changes-such as introducing new features or altering the sales approach-are required.

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What Does It Mean To Be A Product Manager?

The product manager creates and manages product development. This person is responsible for ensuring that the product succeeds by defining customer needs and working with teams and stakeholders to develop it.

Responsibilities Of The Product Manager

The objective of a product manager is to "discover a valuable, usable, and practicable product," according to the author of Inspired: How to Create Things Consumers Love.

Identifying Potential Opportunities: The product manager must first recognize a chance to develop a new product or enhance an existing development by adding features.

A product manager needs to be thoroughly aware of market trends to make judgments about how to develop or improve a product. A product's launch is the responsibility of the product manager.

Create a Vision and Strategy for your Product: A project's long-term goal must be identified by the product manager, who must also develop a workable plan to get there.

According to a recent survey, setting a product strategy is the most crucial task for product managers (84%). The development of a detailed roadmap and oversight of its completion comes next.

Management Of Stakeholders And Team Members: Product managers need to make sure that everyone cooperates to reach the objective.

This person is responsible for organizing the development process most effectively and communicating the requirements to the development team. The product manager must bargain with them to balance stakeholders' needs and expectations.

Promotional Actions: To ensure that marketing plays a significant role in a product's success, product managers collaborate closely with product marketing managers.

This includes conducting market research, keeping an eye on market trends, collecting and analyzing client feedback, setting prices, and developing a marketing plan.

Continuous Product Improvement: Although it could appear that a product manager primarily performs administrative duties, this is untrue.

They consistently labor to improve the product, test it, and examine data to look for flaws. The product manager must make the final choice about the product's development plan, launch date, and design.

User engagement, monetization, and user pleasure are just a few of the KPIs that a product manager must achieve, while there are many others.

The KPIs will differ depending on the business and the sector. While some Best Project Managers are more concerned with writing specifications, supervising the development process, and developing products, others are more concerned with marketing and sales, devising a marketing strategy, and acquiring salespeople.

Product Manager Deliverables

We have already discussed the principal product manager's deliverables when discussing the process. The outputs that must be produced while working on the project will now be briefly reviewed.

Frequently in cooperation with other teams.

• To assist in describing the product's purpose, why it should be built, and who it is for, the product vision (sometimes with mockups, demos, or walkthroughs) is often used.
• User Personas and marketing research reports examine the competition, pinpoint the target market, and develop product/market fit hypotheses.
• Product Strategy and Roadmaps to outline the development process, roles and milestones, and key performance indicators.
• Product requirements list the essential features.
• Dashboards for execution analytics to monitor the development cycle.
• Testing reports to help you find flaws or improvement opportunities.
• Price plan for launching the product and maximizing sales.
• Dashboard for product analytics to track product success.

Product managers can use various software tools to manage such a heavy workload.

Product Manager Tools

Product managers' digital assistants should provide collaboration, data sharing, planning, resource management, monitoring, and tracking as tools for project managers.

Due to their broader responsibilities, product managers are often more involved in software than they would like.

• Email, texting, and web conferencing applications (such as Outlook, Gmail, Zoom, Skype, Slack, etc.) are examples of communication tools.
• Software for creating roadmaps (such as Wrike, ProductPlan, Aha!, etc.).
• Tools for tracking issues (like Jira, Tracking bugs, Bugzilla, etc.).
• Software for customer surveys and feedback (such as SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Usersnap, etc.).
• Tools for business intelligence, (such as Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, etc.).

Depending on the breadth of their work and personal preferences, many product managers use presentation platforms, note-taking software, designer software, and other tools.

Some extensive applications offer multiple process functions, including Jira and Wrike. They also provide a wide range of integration methods to link to other systems.

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Roles Within A Product Team

Depending on the organization's size and level of development, the product manager's responsibilities will change.

A product owner or project manager can take this position in a small startup. We talk about this below. In small organizations, the product manager is likely to be a jack of all crafts, handling duties including Pricing, marketing, sales, and pricing.

However, the jobs are more precisely defined and have a more comprehensive range of functions in more extensive and established businesses.

When the business expands and produces more items, a chief product officer position is required to manage the entire product portfolio.

A product team comprises several people, including those in management and product managers. A project manager and a product marketing director are two of the typical three product managers.

Stakeholders have a say in how a product is developed. A business analyst is a person who assigns work to the IT team based on business requests from stakeholders.

Each manager is given a specific task to complete within the scope of their expertise. The product manager's responsibilities are more inclusive and span all levels.

Let's examine the functional area of the other jobs to understand a product manager's responsibilities better.

Managers Of Projects And Product managers

The project manager manages the product development process and ensures that it follows a schedule and is within budget.

To ensure that the product is delivered on time, this person organizes the activities of all team members, including the engineers and designers.

Setting the overarching vision, creating the strategy, and prioritizing the requirements are all duties of the product manager.

This vision and strategy are used by the project manager to fulfill the predetermined conditions. They allocate project resources, arrange deadlines, and assign jobs. On the other hand, the product manager's role is more strategic than the project manager's.

Product managers work closely with Sales and marketing departments. Project managers do not do this, focusing instead on the development team.

These roles are different in that they each have additional responsibilities for product development. However, they complement each other and share a variety of functions.

Shared responsibilities:

• developing project documents
• regulating the creation process
• Having conversations with customers and stakeholders
• The status of the job should be communicated to clients and stakeholders.

Product Managers And Product Marketing Managers

Product marketing managers are in charge of product branding, positioning, and commercialization. They are in order of designing promotional events and activities, packaging, training sales personnel, and market research.

Typically, they are accountable for the following:

• Identifying user personas and discovering customer information.
• Developing the marketing plan for the product.
• Describing the value of the goods to the market.
• Create marketing materials for a product.

Since they are in charge of making things, product managers have a significantly more comprehensive range of responsibilities.

Another component is marketing. They collaborate with a product marketing manager to fully comprehend prospective clients. Focus groups, questionnaires, interviews, and surveys are just a few of the many research techniques that are accessible.

These techniques enable the creation of user personas, predict customer behavior, and identify critical issues that must be addressed. This information will attract the correct audience to improve the product's features and optimize the UX.

Some of your duties are split with the product marketing manager.

• Pricing,
• Gathering client input,
• Market analysis,
• The creation of sales tools,
• Data analysis related to sales.

Once more, it depends on the company's size and scope. User research is a duty for 70 percent of Product & Project Managers in smaller businesses, according to studies (less than 1000 employees).

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The Final Word

With over 30,000 new goods introduced annually, research indicated that 85% of them fail. There are several reasons for this, but the primary one is that there aren't enough products prepared for the market.

Focusing too much on one component of product development can result in financial losses. Using appropriate product management techniques may prevent these adverse effects and increase the likelihood of your product's success.