Product management combines elements of business management, marketing, and technology. 

“A great product manager has the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat”. – Deep Nishar.

There are different types of product managers with varying levels of responsibilities.

Associate Product Manager (APM): An entry-level role in the product management career path, will assist with the company’s product development by collaborating with cross-functional teams to gather requirements, conducting market research, and analyzing product performance.

Product Manager: A mid-level role in the product management career path, responsible for defining the product vision, strategy, and roadmap.

Senior Product Manager: A senior-level role in the product management career path, responsible for leading a team of product managers and defining the overall product strategy.

Director of Product: A director-level role in the product management career path, responsible for managing a team of senior product managers and overseeing the entire product portfolio.

VP of Product: A vice president-level role in the product management career path, responsible for leading a company’s entire product strategy.

Product managers require a mix of both soft and hard skills to be successful in their roles. Here are some of the key skills:

1. Communication Skills: Product managers often need to convey their objectives and priorities in an easy-to-understand manner. They communicate with their teams to provide direction and ensure product development is operating effectively.

2. Technical Expertise: Especially for those working with virtual products like software and apps, a degree of technical knowledge is often required.

3. UX Proficiency: Understanding user experience (UX) is crucial as it directly impacts the success of a product.

4. Business Knowledge: A good product manager understands the business landscape, including market trends and competitive analysis.

5. Strategic Thinking: This involves setting a vision for the product and making decisions that align with the company’s overall strategy.

6. Prioritisation Skills: Product managers need to prioritize tasks based on their impact on the product’s success.

7. Roadmapping: The ability to develop a product roadmap that aligns with the company’s goals is crucial.

8. Data Analysis: Analyzing data to make informed decisions is a key part of a product manager’s rol

Becoming a successful product manager involves a combination of acquiring relevant skills, gaining experience, and continuous learning.

1. Learn Product Management Fundamentals: Understand the basics of product management including market research, product lifecycle management, and user experience design.

2. Get Familiar with the Product Management Process: Learn about the different stages of product development and how to manage each stage effectively.

3. Conduct User and Industry Research: Understanding your users and the industry you’re in is crucial. This will help you make informed decisions about your product.

4. Develop Your Own Projects: This can help you gain practical experience and understand the challenges involved in managing a product.

5. Create a Portfolio of Products: Showcase your work and demonstrate your ability to successfully manage products.

6. Seek Out Ways to Solve Problems in Your Current Role: This can provide valuable experience and demonstrate your problem-solving skills.

7. Take Product Management Courses: There are many online courses available that can help you learn more about product management.

A technical product manager is a product manager with a strong technical background that is typically focused on the more technical aspects of the product. 

They work closely with the engineering team to understand customer needs and product requirements, set the vision and objectives for the product, conduct technology assessments and trend reports, and manage product planning and development through collaboration and decision-making with a cross-functional team. 

They also represent customers and foster collaboration with product designers, engineers, quality assurance, and marketing. 

Technical product managers are responsible for defining product goals and vision, creating and owning the product roadmap, working with cross-functional teams, understanding and proselytizing agile methodologies and practices such as scrum, kanban, and more, creating and owning the product backlog, uncovering and understanding customer needs, translating them into requirements, working well with internal teams including developers, engineers, architects, quality assurance, and operations. 

They also understand technical specifications, architecture, and networking plans, and participate in security, scalability, and infrastructure activities. Technical product managers may end up owning certain aspects of the product suite or they may be used on a more ad hoc basis as a subject matter expert able to consult on the more technical aspects of different initiatives. They may also be better at certain types of competitive analysis given their deeper understanding of how the products work. 

However, technical product managers are still product managers; they’re not writing code or creating networking diagrams. And despite their technical knowledge, they should always be applying the same customer-centric, business-focused mindset to the task at hand… they can just do so with a deeper understanding of what is and isn’t possible and a potentially better working relationship with the technical teams required to get things done.

A Technical Product Manager requires a mix of technical and soft skills.

Technical Skills

Technical Expertise: A good understanding of the technology relevant to the product.

Understanding of UX: Knowledge of user experience principles and design.

Product Research: Ability to conduct market and competitive technology trends research.

Prototyping: Skills in creating early-stage models of the product.

A/B Testing: Knowledge of testing different versions of a product to see which performs better.

Data Analysis and Extraction: Ability to analyze and extract insights from data.

Data Collection and Management: Skills in gathering and managing data relevant to the product.

Coding: While not always necessary, some coding knowledge can be beneficial.

Technical Writing: Ability to create and manage product documentation.

Soft Skills

Leadership: Experience in a leadership or managerial role is often required.

Communication: Strong communication skills to effectively collaborate with teams and stakeholders.

Problem-Solving: Ability to identify, analyze, and solve problems that arise during product development.

Decision-Making: Capability to make informed decisions that benefit the product and the company.

Be transparent about your prioritisation and roadmap process

Much of the role as a product manager will be explaining “why” to various stakeholders and constituents. Why you’re prioritising one feature or theme over another in a release; why you’ve chosen to focus more on one particular goal for the next two quarters versus another goal.

The best way to get the relevant constituencies — sales, marketing, engineering, your executives — on board with your strategic thinking is to be clear and open with them about why and how you are making decisions.

Be able to say “no,” but explain why in terms that stakeholders understand

There will be plenty of times when an executive will ask for a new feature his gut tells him will be great… when an engineer will suggest tabling the development of a feature set to save time on the next sprint… and when a sales rep will ask (even beg) you to add a specific tool to the next release because a prospect has promised to buy it if it's included.

But if those requests will undermine your strategic objectives for the product, you will often have to say no. The key will be in your ability to articulate why (that all-important word in a successful product manager’s vocabulary) you cannot accommodate the request. Again, the more strategic and backed by evidence you can make your roadmap, your constituents’ more likely to understand when you need to say no.

Be a ruthless prioritizer while balancing the needs of customers and stakeholders

Regardless of your company’s size or budget, you will always face limited resources for your product development. That means you will always need to prfioritize and continually weigh the competing factors of your products, your company’s limited resources, and demands from various stakeholders.

If you’re unsure how to set priorities or weigh various factors in developing your roadmap, several great models can help you get started — such as Weighted scoring and the Kano model.

Bring evidence-based decision-making to your communication

As I’ve stated previously, one key trait of successful product managers is their ability to answer “why” to the many questions they must field from stakeholders throughout their organizations. One of the most effective ways to answer why is with evidence. It’s much more compelling than your opinion — or anyone else’s.

If you have real-world user data, customer feedback, and metrics on your product, then you already have an excellent source of business intelligence to inform how best to build your product roadmap. 

So let your analytics help guide your decisions.

There has been a 25% increase in software engineers transitioning into product management roles over the past three years.

While software engineers focus on “how” to build a solution, product managers are concerned with “what” to build and “why“. They deal with a broader spectrum of concerns, including market needs, profitability, and customer satisfaction.