What does a Product Manager do?
March 2020
The responsibilities of a Product Manager can vary quite a bit across different organizations. Organization size, maturity stage, culture, internal processes and market dynamics all play a role in defining what a Product Manager does in any given company. Charged with the overarching responsibility of creating products that deliver endearing customer experiences while also generating profit, this role is certainly not easy. However it can be very rewarding for those who want to have an impact in other people's lives.
If we compare the launch of a product to a journey fraught with uncertainty, the Product Manager is responsible for determining where to go, pointing the organization towards the destination, determining how to get there and leading the way on the trip.
Determining Where to Go: Market Analysis
The world is full of destinations, and the opportunities for creating a business with a product are as well. The Product Manager leads the effort in analyzing a market to determine what product to create in order to maximize the probability of success for a given organization. Although the depth of the analysis differs by company maturity stage due to the size and opportunity cost of the development investment, there are important basics that need to be covered.
First and foremost is the definition of the customer. Who is the customer that we should serve, what are their pain points, challenges, needs, motivations and what delights them? How can we simplify this person's life and make it better? What problems are we solving for this person? What is the job they are seeking to get done? And, just as important, will they pay for this value we will provide them, and if so, how much? How big is this market? These questions are answered through desk research, market reports and online resources but nothing beats asking customers directly for deep understanding of their needs and motivations.
Secondly: are there other companies serving this customer and meeting this need? If not, why not? If so, what are the other companies’ strengths, weaknesses, and why do we think we can do it better? In addition, what are substitutes the customer is currently using to solve their problem? What prices are they currently paying to solve it? Can we do it better?
There are multiple frameworks used in the process of bringing this research all together to make a decision, however the tried-and-true SWOT analysis is a must. Summarizing the company's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats to define a product destination allows you to start the journey with eyes wide open on where the challenges lie. The Product Manager works collaboratively with other stakeholders in this analysis and ensures everyone is aligned before moving forward.
Pointing Towards the Destination: Vision Setting
This step is so commonly overlooked, and yet is so powerful for focusing the organization on the end goal to get to market in the shortest time possible.
Setting the product vision is beginning with the end in mind, painting a picture of the end result. As opportunities and feature ideas are limitless, the product vision keeps leadership, the development team and all other stakeholders focused on where we are going and why. Once a succinct product vision statement is defined, every feature idea is scrutinized within the vision context, and if it doesn't support the vision, it doesn't get developed. Time to market is paramount, and the product vision is imperative to helping the organization say no to the less important, in order to focus everyone on the features that are most important for solving the customer problem.
A great Product Manager takes this a step further and helps develop a product vision that not only focuses, but inspires. Doing this requires tying the vision statement back into how the product makes their customer lives better, which brings purpose to the team creating the product.
Determining How To Get There: Formulating Strategy
Once the market analysis and product vision are set, it is now time to put analysis into action. The Product Manager leads the effort on setting product go-to-market strategy. This exercise begins with setting quantifiable objectives and determining how these objectives will be measured. The key question to ask is 'What are our objectives for this new product, and how will we know we've reached our goals?'. The objectives should be focused around the main business reason for creating the product or feature set in the first place. Is it to increase customer satisfaction with the product? Net Promoter Score (NPS) for software is a common way to measure via quick survey pop-ups. Unit sales, revenue and profitability over the launch timeframe are typical objectives for hardware product launches, whereas user satisfaction, adoption, engagement and retention are often used for software.
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) is a great framework that a Product Manager will use for this effort. They are simple to administer, manage and provide great visibility throughout the organization on what is important, what is being measured and the progress towards reaching the objective. An example objective would be 'Successfully launch version 2.0 of our collaboration software platform' and example key results include 'Sign up over 5,000 new users by month 3' and 'Increase subscription retention rate to 98% by month 6'. Note that the key results quantify the objective and are easily measurable.
The Product Manager educated in Lean Innovation principles will also use the strategy phase to define experiments. As the journey to reach a successful product destination is filled with uncertainty, pick the top two or three assumptions that are crucial for success and design experiments to validate the hypotheses. Although not as straight forward for hardware products as this is for software, it can still be done. Early prototypes and concepts can be delivered to key customers for their feedback on what they like, don't like, how many they would buy and for what price. Obtaining this information by experimentation helps either validate key assumptions or directs the team towards a pivot, while minimizing cost and time.
Leading the Way on the Journey: Execution
The analysis is done, the organization is focused through a succinct and inspiring product vision, and the go-to-market strategy is set. Now all that is left is doing it. Although you would think this is the easy part, it isn't. Obstacles always surface. Markets shift. Competitors enter. Economies fluctuate. Technical challenges emerge.
This is where the Product Manager gut is tested. After putting in lots of effort to ensure the right product is being built, issues emerge and it is the Product Manager who must work creatively - utilizing relationships with development, leadership and other stakeholders in the company to solve problems and keep moving forward, quickly. The quicker you get to market with the product (as long as it solves the customer problem) the better, as all assumptions on the success of a product are truly unknown until the customer gets their hands on it. Tradeoffs will naturally have to be dealt with as development estimates are truly just that until the team dives deeper into development. The Product Manager will need to evaluate time-to-market and cost against launch features. In this situation, the Product Manager should focus on pleasing only one audience and that is the customer. However there are business objectives that also must be met. There is often no right answer and this is where the intuition of the Product Manager, steeped in insight and understanding of the customer, will be key to making the best decision.
And there you go. That is what a Product Manager does. Easy, right?
If you don't have the Product Management function in your company, think about how these responsibilities are spread across the organization. Having a single owner with the right process can help shorten time to market through quicker decisions, and act as the voice of the customer with an eye towards the business. If you, as a business leader, are finding yourself mired in these types of day-to-day product decisions, consider the opportunity cost of your time and what you would do with that time back.
