In the context of software products.
In: 2
Product managers act as a sort of glue between the high-level, strategic objectives of a company or team and the low-level implementation details.
For example, a product manager for Reddit might be on a team focused on user engagement, as measured by how many posts users read per session. That PM would try to come up with ideas for how to raise that number (that’s the business objective part). For example, they might say “aha, I bet if we sprinkle in posts from a related subreddit, people will read more”. Then they’d work with a designer to try to figure out what those sprinkled-in posts might actually look like (that’s the implementation details part) in the Reddit website or mobile app. And then they and the designer would write out a spec for what the site should do and give that to software engineers to actually build it.
The details of this process vary a lot from company to company, but that’s the gist.
Product Management defines what the product is. Lots of stuff goes into this:
* user feature requests
* business forecasts
* development capacity
* revenue projection
* competition
* …more…
In the world of products, you have Product Managers, Engineers, and Executives.
The Executives run the company at a high level, and are primarily concerned with ensuring that you’re making enough profit on the products you’re selling, so that the company can pay its bills and grow. They also set the overall strategic direction of the company.
The Engineers are the ones that build the products, but in many cases they don’t really know why they’re building what they’re building. They don’t talk to customers often, and don’t really understand what customers want/need. They’re told to build something that does X, Y, and Z, and that’s what they’re good at doing. They don’t need to know why.
Product Managers sit in between. They talk to customers a lot, and they’re in touch with what customers need, and why they need it. They’re also in touch with trends in the market, and they keep tabs on what their competitors are doing. They come up with ideas for products (with help from a lot of other people in a variety of roles), and convince the Executives that the product will be sufficiently profitable to justify the expense of developing it. Assuming the Executives agree and give a product the green light, then the Product Manager tells the Engineers what products to build, and sets the expectations for what those products need to do.
The Engineers then start developing the product, and the Product Manager regularly reviews their work to make sure it’s going down the right path. Eventually, the product is done being developed, at which point the Product Manager works with Marketing to announce the product to the market, and teaches the Sales team the details about the product and the best way to sell it.
While the product is actively being sold, the Product Manager continues talking to customers about the product to keep up-to-date on how the product is being perceived in the market. If changes or updates are required, the Product Manager works with Engineering to develop and publish those updates. Throughout this process, the Product Manager provides the customer’s perspective to everyone. “The customer really wants to do X with our product, but they can’t because our product does Y, so we need to do Z to fix that.”
Eventually, many products become outdated or obsolete. The cost to maintain and continue selling that product no longer makes sense. At this point, the Product Manager can decide to discontinue the product. They work with Marketing to announce the discontinuation to customers, and ensure that the Sales team knows what alternate products to suggest to customers in its place.
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