What Does a Product Manager Do?

Are you an experienced product person that has built and shipped many products over the years? Or do you want to enter the thrilling and dangerous world of Product Management? I've been in Product Management in Silicon Valley for more than 8 years. Startups and a big tech company. And I often get asked: "What are product people doing in their day to day jobs?"

I often even ask myself: “How are other PMs doing their work? What is the priority for them? Am I missing something they are doing?” I am now holding all these answers in my digital hands. Sharing takeaways of a survey among PMs and adding some personal thoughts.

Alpha’s 2020 Product Management Insights Report shows the result of a survey among product managers of all levels of experience in companies of all sizes. It’s a good moment to step out of the daily grind and compare yourself.

When I first started out working as a PM, my day looked like this: After I walked in every morning, I grabbed a coffee and went to my desk. I checked my inbox, then my task list and my calendar. I went to meetings. I answered questions about the product and removed blockers where possible. I looped in other teams to get products and features ready for launch. I visited my old friend JIRA (and Asana) many times during a day.

I sequentially went through my to-do list and kept things moving along. Not much about that has changed, to be honest … and there is nothing wrong with that, you might think.

When I started out, I kept asking myself if everything I did was “how it is supposed to be as a PM.” I knew what I needed to do, but I didn’t know if this was the “right” process. So I kept wondering:

? Does the day look like this for other PMs?

? Can I create smoother and efficient processes to avoid fires?

? Am I doing this right, or am I missing something?

You might think: “Hmm, why didn’t you Google it or read a book about it? If you want to improve, there is a lot of knowledge out there.”

True, but then, every product is different. There are templates and frameworks (Lean, Agile, Scrum …) but there is no one-size-fits-all for your day-to-day work, or for your planning and strategy sessions.

There is one common goal, and that is product success. But the paths to get there are completely different, depending on your product’s life cycle, your industry and your customers, to name a few.

However, we see similar key activities emerge — activities that help us orient ourselves in the daily grind. These we find common among all product managers.

What those look like for 2020 is what this year’s PM survey unveils to us.

What was the survey?

Participants: 550 product managers

Time of survey: December 2019

Career levels: PMs, directors, executives

Company sizes: 65% 0–1,000 employees, 15% 1,001–5,000, 19% 5,000+

Years of experience are across the board.

What are the key responsibilities?

What are the main responsibilities of a PM? The top three answers are not a surprise. However, the top two answers beat the rest by a big margin.

1. Product strategy or process design (84%)

2. Setting the roadmap (83%)

3. User research (59%)

Source: Alpha 2020 PM Insights

Customer feedback drives a lot of the roadmap and strategy. However, I am surprised about the big gap between No. 2 and No. 3.

A possible explanation is PMs in bigger organizations have user research departments doing this for them. I had that luxury when I worked at a big tech company. Yet I felt very involved and responsible for preparing content and questions for the research.

The number is much bigger in smaller companies. Two-thirds of PMs in companies <1,000 employees see themselves as responsible for user research.

The smaller the company, the more important it is. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Here is why:

• Still looking for perfect product-market fit.
• User base small, and not enough inbound user feedback.
• No luxury of having your own research group.
• There is usually just one product, and this needs to succeed for the company to make it.

The soft spot of product managers

I want to highlight the section around user research and talking to customers. Whether you build end-consumer or enterprise products, the standards are rising. If your competitors understand your customers better than you do, the customers will not be yours much longer.

Source: Alpha 2020 PM Insights

What does the survey show? The majority of PMs think they need to spend more time talking to customers. We all know how valuable these conversations are. You can never have enough of those, and that’s why this result resonates with me and, seemingly, the majority of PMs.

You want to make a PM feel guilty? Ask them if they think they talk enough to their customers or users.

What are the daily activities of other PMs?

The results here align a lot with my daily tasks mentioned above. The one thing I find missing is “writing product specifications and documentation.” It doesn’t fall in any of the given categories. I spend a solid amount of time writing down what we are deciding to build and design.

Here are the results:

Source: Alpha 2020 PM Insights

When you are lagging for ideas and inspiration

The study reveals many more interesting insights. I focus on three topics here and will let you glance through it yourself for more.

Lastly, though, if you ever find yourself out of ideas, your backlog is empty, and you don’t know what to do next, here are some things you can do that other PMs are doing.

I would prioritize my list just like this. High five, fellow product people!

Source: Alpha 2020 PM Insights

That’s all you need.

Now go out there, and be an excellent product manager. But first, check out the full report for more insights and details.