Art Petty is an author and speaker offering management guidance. Even service-focused firms rely upon a version of the product manager role to translate customer needs and market insights into new services offerings. As a product manager, your tasks are likely to include: 1. taking overall responsibility for the success of your product 2. contributing towards product strategy and vision 3. meeting regularly with all stakeholders, including product developers, marketing, customer service, finance and company heads 4. collecting analysing and responding to user feedback 5. managing one or more budgets 6. gathering and evaluating ideas and opinions 7. planning new features and changes to a product 8. demonstrating ne… How do you avoid getting stuck in decision paralysis? They've had too much schooling and not enough real-world experience. Some of my favorites are Alisa Warshawski’s tips on getting into product management, and Brian Croft's on figuring out if you’re cut out for the role. Be prepared for a true adventure you’ll never get bored of. My role is a lot of customer development, a lot of basically talking to customers, identifying features, overseeing roadmaps, product strategy, really everything that is in and around product management. Now, when it comes to the what should you be doing in your job, it's a similar sort of thing. To better understand the difference, let us start with some basics to lay the foundation.You may also like: Transformation from Project Leader to Project Manager Product manager with a decade of experience managing hospitality and transportation technologies. When I look at someone who wants to get into product management, I want to know that they are very business-minded, very metrics driven. I used to think of myself as an inventor, problem solver and artist. If you decide to set up as a self-employed project manager, you’ll need to register … The most valuable thing you can do to help land a Product … Once a product has moved through the development phases, the product manager works to help prepare the organization to market, sell, and support the offering. Learn about the job description and duties, and read the step-by-step process to start a career as an IT project manager. Can you work with people? Identify which one of the skills you have, and focus on these to become a better product manager. You need to have empathy for customers, too, and understand what they're really saying as opposed to what's on the surface. Another part is allowing new people to sign up for the card. But the path to that finish line diverges entirely from the beginning. The role is part entrepreneurial and part general management, and individuals who prefer to operate with a high degree of responsibility and independence enjoy working in this position a great deal. A career in product management is rich in challenges and opportunities to learn and to contribute to the success of an organization. Having an MBA, though, I usually find those candidates are less than the greatest. In describing the product manager’s role, our friends at Mind the Product cite Marty Cagan’s book Inspired, which explains succinctly that the job of a product manager Of course, back then, there wasn't a lot of generally accepted terminology. Not that coding skills hurt. Skills Required for Success as a Product Manager, Take a Look at the Role and Responsibilities of Today's Manager, Consider the Positives and Negatives of a Career in Management, Here's a List of the Top 10 Jobs for Marketing Majors, 7 Great Management Lessons You Learn as a Product Manager, The Leadership Challenges of Being a Project Manager, Tips for Answering Job Interview Questions About Changing Jobs, Creating a Job Plan Using a Sample Template Is Easy, If You Want to Build Successful Teams, Use These 12 Tips, General Manager Job Description: Salary, Skills, & More, What Every Manager Needs to Know About Succession Planning. We spoke with three product managers about their careers how to get started in the field. When the team does really well and delivers, the developers and designers get the credit. Bavaro: I’m a product manager lead, so I lead a team of product managers looking to build functionality that expands on what Asana calls the “pyramid of clarity.” So that's the idea that users should be able to connect the tasks that they’re doing each day to larger projects, team goals, company goals, all the way ladder up to the very top of the pyramid, which is their company's mission. Every line of their resume should speak to metrics. But even when I was VP of New Products, I didn't recognize what I was doing. Many move into sales and marketing roles. A lot of my job is direct people management, so having one-on-ones with people, talking about their career growth plans, their goals, the areas that they're working on. I started as a product manager right out of college. As a project manager or product manager, you need to be skilled at pulling together cross-functional teams from across your company and helping them work as a cohesive unit. This is an American Express-issued card card that lets our members earn points and other benefits. Product management is a great way for non-technical professionals to join the tech boom. You really have to be able to identify problems and know which ones you need to put resources behind. 2. It is the underlying structure of a project that guides a project manager or a product owner. And so if your aim is to get a job at a specific company, it's helpful to look and see what kinds of degrees they require. industry standards and certifying practices, The ability to cultivate a deep understanding of a particular market segment or customer grouping, Familiarity with the specific application of the products in customer settings, Curiosity to explore and identify customer challenges and translate those challenges into product or service ideas, The ability to develop a business plan and investment case for new product development or current product enhancement (a degree in business, especially an MBA, is particularly helpful in this role), Critical thinking skills for assessing customer needs, competitor offerings, and key trends and translating this knowledge into investment plans, The ability to guide and lead others informally—without formal report-to authority, Outstanding written and spoken communication skills, with an emphasis on persuasion abilities, Depending upon the nature of the offering, a deep level of technical expertise (many product managers have technical backgrounds, including engineering degrees). Can you manage the politics of it? I’m responsible for ad servers, targeting and personalization to account holds and prospects. The project manager can work directly with the product manager. If you're interested in becoming a product manager, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. It's the impacts that make me interested enough to bring you in and talk to you. Given the broad scope of the role of product manager, there are many skills essential for success. The challenging role of product manager is increasingly sought after by professionals looking to gain broad organizational exposure and management experience. Bavaro: I think one of the parts that's pretty common for people to find tricky is that you've got lots of stakeholders, lots of different people who have different ideas, beliefs, and goals. I also find it helpful to look at general purpose management books, like High Output Management or The Manager's Path, that aren't specifically about product management. Both project managers and product managers need to be strong communicators, making sure everyone on your team understands both their own role and the big-picture goals. But having the product manager experience at one company,  I was able to take it to another company. There will also be analytical-type questions that basically involve taking a big, ambiguous problem and breaking it down into smaller sets so that you can make progress on it. Bavaro: Product managers help decide what problems the team should solve and help define what success looks like. Are You Ready for an Agile Future at Work? It is common for both individuals—the product manager and the project manager—to work together on a new product development or product enhancement initiative. Intercom also has a really great product blog. One of the best ways to demonstrate your interest in product management is to work on a side project that gives you the experience in shipping a product. Their broad base of industry, offering, and operations knowledge makes them highly desirable for a number of roles in an organization. The product marketing manager focuses more on outbound marketing and coordination, while the product manager tends to focus a majority of their efforts on internal coordination, particularly with the firm’s research and development or engineering teams. I'm always looking to see, What are the problems out there that are worth solving? There are 3 main steps: 1. Product manager interviews differ from company to company, but generally there will be an interview that’s testing your customer focus and your ability to solve customer problems through good product design. ... because you have credibility that will enable you to get "stuff" "the right stuff" done which ultimately is how you become a successful product manager. He wrote about management and leadership for The Balance Careers. Any role where you learn to drive results through others without formal authority is a great teaching role. The product manager will often work with the project manager, as well as the customer and sales team. Build a digital brand focused on product management and apply to jobs. From market research to product development, packaging, promotion and selling, these individuals managed their offerings for growth and profits. I don't want to know that you managed a team of 30 people. The product manager's responsibilities span the entire organization and extend into the marketplace, typically by focusing on one or more industries and customer groups. Learn the basic skills of the profession. Learn the skills (hint: programming is not one of them). In this split-role situation, the two parties work closely together to ensure consistency and coordination across stakeholder groups. You might not be able to do product management today, but a lot of companies can help structure a career path into a more product management role. The duration of these apprenticeships range from two to five years, depending on the company you work for and the level you study at. Work on side projects and build a product portfolio. So, I did, and this is it. Still, product management is about vision, managerial finesse, having a strong sense of why a company's products matter and always striving to improve on what’s already out there. The project manager is responsible for coordinating and guiding teams working on temporary and unique initiatives, while the product manager approaches their offerings from a business-wide, managerial perspective. Usually when you have at least a bachelors, there's more of a common language, but that's not the biggest deal. Part of my responsibility is making sure that anyone who has the card is able to redeem their benefits and is aware of what those benefits are. Or you can keep gaining project management experience and working your way up the project management career ladder without a degree, certification, or other “classical” project manager education. I was reorganized into my first role as a product manager. So we have a workshop twice a week; that's when teams bring in things they're working on and, no matter what stage of the process they're in —-whether it's in the discovery phase or if it's got designs and they're getting closer to design review — we workshop the challenges they're going through. Product manager at Asana and co-author of Cracking the PM Interview. The role of a product manager is becoming increasingly popular. There is often confusion, however, about just what a product manager does. Both a project manager and a product owner oversee teams who work hard to bring projects across the finish line together. The project manager has the benefit of well-defined industry standards and certifying practices, while the role of product manager is considerably less formalized at an industry level. The role has a special mystique because it requires no coding, a rarity among tech jobs. What do they do? I really recommend Julie Zhuo, who writes The Year of the Looking Glass on Medium; some posts are all about product managers. We've determined that 45.3% of product managers have a bachelor's degree. These include: Product managers come from all manner of backgrounds, including: Additionally, some firms hire individuals directly from firms in the target market segment. If your answer is yes, you could be on your way to a career in project management. The project manager has the benefit of well-defined industry standards and certifying practices, while the role of product manager is considerably less formalized at an industry level. But you need to understand the technology enough to have a technical conversation, and translate it into layman's terms for business folks—who might be stakeholders, but not as technically adept. Some people think of Steve Jobs and other tech luminaries as lone geniuses. Chief product officer at Tafifi who blogs about product management at The Product Guy, I’ve been a product manager from the very beginning, but I didn’t always recognize I was doing a thing called product management. They do, however, use people skills like emotional intelligence, or EQ, to align different stakeholders around their vision of the product at hand, which could be anything from a cloud platform feature to a physical tablet. You might be one of my many wondering how to become a product manager. Eventually, the product manager plans a replacement product while managing the discontinuation of the older offering. Software industry professionals, especially project managers and developers, often look to product management as the next step in their career progression. But in most cases, the two frequently collaborate in order to create the best outcome possible. Over time, practically every industry sector has adopted some form of the product manager role. Some tips for beginning your career in product management are to learn the basics of coding, use data as much as possible in your daily reporting and look into a junior product manager course. How do you help them see that they’re on the same team, and help them align and agree to go forward with a certain approach? I’ve been building digital products for nearly a decade now. There are no barriers to entry – and it’s a role where you can make a real tangible impact at your organization. Other people just really like the creativity. Dixon: No. Now, this is close to 20 years ago. To those companies, it's essential that PMs can prove their technical abilities. Several companies have associate product manager programs, and they'll hire people directly out of college with no experience. But a lot of general management's principles are ones that product managers will find helpful. I was a computer science undergrad. Similar to the role of project manager, the product manager has the challenging task of leading others and being accountable for results without the luxury of direct authority. Horn: Let’s start with the resume. This is a challenging, demanding job and one that is increasingly pursued by new college and MBA graduates. And they do all of this by guiding, engaging with, and leading individuals and functions across their organization, often with no more formal authority than their ability to persuade others to back their ideas. I wouldn't have said that probably five years ago, but Google has dropped their college degree requirement for engineer, which means the same will be applied for product management. Register for tax. The truth is, the best product managers are self-taught. My background was marketing brand. Product managers become subject matter experts in their markets and technologies and are often called upon to meet with customers or prospects and speak at industry events or contribute to relevant publications. There are few roles in our modern workplace that rival the opportunity the product manager has to shape the future success of an organization while simultaneously developing a wide range of skills. You can learn a lot on the job. That's the hardest part. Around 2003 or 2004, I kind of came through and said, "Oh, it's product management.". You can either go the “traditional” route — i.e. Find a way to talk to customers. Understanding complex customer problems and building the right solutions for their problems is definitely appealing. They're generally looking for someone with a computer science background. Product managers work to understand the needs and challenges of their targeted customers and to translate those insights into ideas for new product development or existing product enhancement. A lot of tech companies source their product people out of former engineering background, as opposed to getting someone straight off the street or someone with a business background. That, at the end of the day, [is what] you have to do to be a successful product manager. While product managers can advance their own functions or departments, it is common for experienced product managers to follow career paths into general management or functional management roles. I was lucky enough to know people who suggested the role to me, and I think problem-solving skills helped me get it. So they take over ownership of an internal tool or maybe they in addition to answering customer support questions, they start suggesting to the product team and coming up with designs for how we might avoid those questions in the first place. It is clear that the output of each milestone should have the ability to release, but as to whether it must be output, this can be done by the project manager, product manager, The project management committee consults and decides together. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 37.6% of product managers have master's degrees. The other popular way that I've seen is internal transfer. And those interdepartmental teams are led by product managers. Basically, the product manager is an organizational role. And after doing this for a while, they're able to internally transfer to a position with the title of product manager. What was the result of your managing it? During a product's life, the product manager is involved in monitoring performance, recommending adjustments to pricing or promotion, and working with customers to identify potential enhancements. What are the fastest ways to solve those problems? I have yet to see a standard job description for a product manager, because each role is ultimately defined by the size, type of product, stage, industry, and even culture of the company. We chatted on the phone and then I realised that I’m asked this question so often that it seemed a good idea to condense my thoughts into an article. Just as project manager and business analyst need to be two separate jobs, so do product manager and project manager. They’re giving advice, walking people through lessons. 3. Horn: I’m chief product officer slash chief executive officer at Tafifi, which is a tool to help product managers manage ideas, manage their roadmap and communicate to stakeholders and management exactly what's happening in real time. Another aspect is supporting projects. -- Ashish Malpani, director of product marketing, HID Global. From my point of view, if you are having trouble landing a product management job with your current credentials, then going for a graduate degree can be a great way to transfer into the role, because of the network that you'll build. In some markets, the role has been split into two: the product manager and product marketing manager. Project Manager and Product Manager are two different positions which often create confusion. Welcome a New Employee With an Introduction Letter. There isn't a secret formula for automatically becoming a product manager. If you already have a product manager job, I wouldn't generally be recommended to stop and go back to school. RelatedRead More About Product Management. The career path will most likely be slightly different for most product managers. You can train in roles like assistant project manager, project manager, project co-ordinator, project executive and project support officer. They can also work directly with the customer and the project team as well as … There isn't a secret formula for automatically becoming a product manager. Horn: On our YouTube channel, The Product Way, we have hundreds of videos from mentors and product management masters. The Balance Careers uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. Nonetheless, the contributions they make are quite distinct. So, for example, Amazon has to hire mostly MBA candidates, Google has to hire mostly people who have a computer science degree. Become a Great Product Manager: Things You Should Do Immediately Side Projects. People who've been working for a while might also get an MBA and take a product management job after graduating. Strong Emotional Intelligence Good product managers can easily handle customer interviews. Though some of the organizations have all three different roles, still the confusion persists about their work. A lot of the folks that I've talked to who have been doing it for more than a decade, like I have, have similar stories. I think it's very rewarding to help a team of people focus on important problems, especially because the vast majority of the time, those problems are really customer-based. Project Manager vs Product Manager. How to Become a Product Manager, According to Three Experts. A few weeks ago, a friend messaged me for advice on becoming a product manager. Product has just now, in the last three to five years, gotten to a point where that people really train for product roles and aspire to be product managers. The classical role of product manager originated within consumer products companies such as Procter & Gamble or Unilever, where these product or category champions served as CEOs of their offerings. The results of each milestone should have the ability to be output, and it needs to be able to be tested. But I didn't have terminology for it. In general, I think you probably need a bachelor's to get into product management. Bavaro: The job is a very popular one right now, and different companies will have different requirements. Was there any difference between your managing that team of 30 versus some other person managing that team of 30? You don't need to have a technical background to be a great product manager, but if you want to go directly into product management it helps. It can be really rewarding to talk to customers who are impacted by changes you've made. Product managers also are tasked with getting stakeholder support and distinguishing essential ideas from duds. One project turned into 3 years. So people who are at a company and have one job — they’re an engineer, or maybe they're in customer support or technical documentation — and they keep doing that job really well, but they pick up side projects more like what a product manager would do. Dixon: For me, I get a lot of satisfaction from actually going through the process, going from a concept to having something built and having people use it. Everyone can put together a product strategy, but can you get it done? That’s often easier said than done, though, because to an outside observer both roles can look pretty similar — they both require someone to take ownership of an important process. Research the requirements to become an IT project manager. For some people, I think the satisfaction they get is really just the learning, because for them it's a stepping stone to more of an executive role. However, they may overlap and a Project Management can also be a Product Management. The exciting thing about product management is that there’s no one road to becoming a product manager. They create the business cases or plans for investment ideas and, when these are approved by management, work closely with engineering or research and development teams to identify requirements and support the process of translating an idea into a new product. While there is a great deal of cross-group coordination involved in carrying out the role of product manager, the job should not be confused with that of the project manager. Find a way to work those product management muscles. set out to become a project manager, get a qualification, and take a role as a project manager. Talk to your manager. That’s more myth than reality, though. They're sometimes referred to as “CEOs of the product,” but that title isn't quite accurate because product managers have little direct authority over their teams. There is no space for dullness in this profession. Dixon: Product management in general is a thankless role. Dixon: A lot of people will recommend that you know how to code, and I don't necessarily endorse that. Read about what product managers do and how to get into this lucrative career. Dixon: I’m a senior product manager at an international hospitality chain, and I focus on the digital channel supporting our credit card. You’ve got to talk to a lot of people, and just do your best to not be emotionally attached to any feature or strategy so that you can be nimble and adjust as you learn. There are many firms involved in training product managers, but as of this writing, there is no standardized body of knowledge or certifying body, such as those that exist in the field of project management. Here’s a look at some of the reasons a career as a product manager might be right for you, as well as some of the potential challenges that might steer you away from the field. Horn: I'd say it kind of goes two ways. Project management is one of the most complex fields of work out there. Jobs stood alone onstage to introduce the first iPhone in 2007, but behind the scenes he worked with a massive team to make it. There’s no official certification you need to enter this field. It's real-world experience that really matters. Did they have fewer defects? When something goes wrong, leadership points the finger at the product manager and says, "What'd you do?" Beyond the responsibilities laid out above, the product manager can also lead the marketing for the product… Hint: there is no cookie cutter way to becoming a product manager. I'm not a coder myself. It's more about getting your very first job, and then your work speaks for itself. Horn: I'd say that when you think about just product management in general, it's making sure that you've not just identified the most valuable problem to solve, but that you're also solving it correctly. Bavaro: So there's a few main ways that people get into product management. You'll learn the skills that make up the entire Product Management job and process: from ideation to market research, to UX wireframing to prototyping, technology, metrics, and finally to building the product with user stories, project management, scoping, and leadership. By using The Balance Careers, you accept our. You very rarely, as product manager, get pats on the back — unless you give them to yourself or get support from other product managers. And what are the pros and cons of each approach? The career path will most likely be slightly different for most product managers. The most updated and complete Product Management course on Udemy! There are many paths into this interesting and important role. Everything I did professionally was about continuously releasing stuff, learning, talking to customers. There are many firms involved in training product managers, but as of this writing, there is no standardized body of knowledge or certifying body, such as those that exist in the field of project management. The creation of most tech products, in fact, requires teamwork between multiple departments: IT, engineering, marketing and sales, among others. Customers frequently ask for one thing when the problem is something else. Bavaro: Lots of people blog about product management. Some tips for beginning your career in product management are to learn the basics of coding, use data as much as possible in your daily reporting and look into a junior product manager course. A side project could be anything from a tangible iPhone app, wireframe, or even PowerPoint case study. Serving as a product manager offers an opportunity to gain high visibility in the organization and to cultivate the skills and reputation necessary to advance in future general management roles.