What is a Product Manager?

When you hear the term ‘Product Manager’ you probably think of someone in charge of products such as pencils or dresses or shoelaces. Maybe they come up with new designs or are responsible for merchandising. Well, there are jobs like that but the type I mean is very different. I have been learning a lot about Product Management this week and have come to the conclusion that it’s my dream job.

I found a website called ‘Mind the Product’ which has a great description of what a Product Manager does and the type of person who would be suited to that role. The writer, Martin Eriksson, also included a great diagram which pretty much sums it up. Here it is on the left (or underneath if you’re viewing this on a mobile).  So the diagram goes some way to explaining but here are some more facts about product managers:

• They are sometimes called ‘Product Owners’ Or ‘Scrum Product Owners’

 

• Scrum is not related to rugby. It’s related to a project management practise called Agile

 

• Agile is a realtively modern approach to project management – namely IT development. Developers are often bogged down with huge tasks and can lack a sense of acheivement when things go on forever and the all the while the tasks keep rolling in. Agile development is much more fun and dynamic. The team have a ‘stand up’ every morning (it literally means standing up to have a meeting) and the roadmap for the project(s) currently in progress is reviewed.

A common approach is to have a Kanban board showing the road map in stages with bite size tasks listed under the stage headings. These bitesized tasks are moved up the process when completed so there’s a very visual journey of the project and a real sense of progress. The whole thing is generally lead by a Scrum Master which is another name for project manager.

Are you keeping up with this? Good.

So where does the product manager fit in?

They are ultimately the voice of the end user: the person this whole project is trying to please, persuade and ultimately sell to. Working in this way has great benefits. Look at Apple for example. Their products are all about the user and the cost to create the product isn’t what matters; what matters is that it changes lives, solves problems and wows the end user. A user-centric approach has served them pretty well as they broke the record for biggest quarterly profits ever recorded this week 

In his post, Eriksson goes on to explain how a product manager moves between three main areas:

Business

Product Management is above all else a business function, focused on maximising business value from a product. Product Managers should be obsessed with optimising a product to achieve the business goals while maximising return on investment.

Technology

There’s no point defining what to build if you don’t know how it will get built. This doesn’t mean a Product Manager needs to be able to sit down and code but understanding the technology stack and most importantly understanding the level of effort involved is crucial to making the right decisions.

User Experience

Last but not least the Product Manager is the voice of the user inside the business and must be passionate about the user experience. Again this doesn’t mean being a pixel pusher but you do need to be out there testing the product, talking to users and getting that feedback first hand – especially in a start-up.

How cool does that sound?!

Websites that I know for a fact use product managers are Sky.com, MCFC.co.uk and The Guardian (because I’ve spoken to them about it this week). They are some of the best websites in the UK if not the world for UX. I found this article from Econsultancy in which they evangilise about MCFC and their user-centric iPad app which is a good read (if you’ve read much on my site you know I’m obsessed with the Econsultancy blog).

If anyone would like to teach me more about this topic I would love to hear from you. I will of course buy you a beer/tea/fancy coffee for your trouble. 

Photos: flickr.com/photos/kanban_tool & © 2011 Martin Eriksson