What makes a Great Product Manager?

Hey, really happy that you are here and taking out your precious time to read this article. Alert! It is a quite a long article, and If I were you I would probably leave it in-between. But, If you are an aspiring Product manager then please read it completely. It will help you a lot in understanding the company perspective, which will eventually put you on the right path.

I am a Product Manager myself, haven`t done a course for this, instead learned(how global products can be made in India) the hard way while building my own startups www.actiwate.in. It takes a lot of knowledge and patience to develop the mindset for that one product that can go global. People wonder why Indian products are not competent with global products { I said products and not startups and that too in a generalized manner. There are many products in India that make me feel proud, Flipkart, Myntra and Zomato being on the top}. There are many reasons for this some say that our first attempt is to copy the west, some say that we don`t have the talent etc etc. It is true to some extent but things are changing and I believe we will see a lot of global products coming out of India in the next 10 years.

I don`t tag myself as a great product manager as I am still improving in Business, Design, and Technology. To me being a great Product Manager is a breed really rare out there and most of the Product managers struggle in one or more aspects of management. That`s fair but the problem is that very few are trying to understand the gaps and fill them at the right point in time.

I recently met a Co-founder of a leading E-commerce Company and we were having a discussion about the product management and which is the best place to find one. That got me thinking as there are many product managers out there but very few qualify for the company requirements. This inspired me to write an article on “How can one become a great product manager”

Software engineers build the product, Designers define the User Interactions and User Experience of the product(it’s how the product looks and feels to the end user), Marketers market the product, Business Developers help in expanding user-base of the product, Quality Analysts do the testing test the product and Product Managers….. at this point many will say do nothing.

So, who are these product managers? What do they do? Why does each company need them? How does one become a great product manager?

Just read the whole article and you will get answers to all the questions asked above, also I will tell you how to introspect and improve over the period of time and what an employer is looking forward to.

Not all product roles are same, following are three different hiring scenarios with different product management requirements:

offline-to-online companies {flipkart, travel companies etc.} generally look for IIM graduates as product managers which are data focused, to track the growth of the product.

Main Revenue Source: Transactional revenue

Pros: Superb managers with a habit of making decisions based on data

Cons: Weak in tech and design, so generally require a tech manager to complement their skill-set

Business oriented Product companies {Alibaba, Indiamart} look for engineers who have tried developing their own products and understand the feasibility of a feature

Main Revenue Source: Transactional revenue

Pros: Excellent developers, they will get everything developed for you in no time

Cons: Weak business sense which is general cause of demise of products, so generally require a manager to create a priority list for them and keep the product in sync with business

User oriented Product companies {facebook, whatsapp} look for engineers cum interation designers who have tried developing their own user focused products and understand how uses interact with their product as well.

Main Revenue Source: Non-transactional based revenue such as ads, premium plans

Some people think of product managers as smart communicators who don`t have an expertise still delegate tasks to others and essentially do nothing:

Is Product manager just another management role? Does his primary responsibility comprise of delegating tasks to others?

On the outside, it might look like that. But job of a product manager is much more complicated and crucial for success :-)

Why is the role of a Product Manager so important?

The product manager is often called the product “CEO”. A Product manager’s job is at the intersection of Business, Technology, and Design. His key role is to give direction to the product and as a result of that, to everyone’s work as well. He defines the road-map of the product, acquire resources for the product and foresees the development till the end. He also evaluates the Impact /Effort metric and prioritizes tasks.

A product manager gives direction to the product and the whole team.

So if the product does well, everyone’s work will have great value; and if he messes up, the collective effort of all the designers, developers, testers, marketers working for that product, has gone for a toss. In short, the product manager has the potential to make it a big hit or shit.

Thus, this job is really crucial, and anyone just ‘good enough’ would not work.

What it implies is that it is all the imperative to hire a great product manager than just settle for a good one. Which will be visible in the product as well the team management.

Good is mediocre and good product managers create mediocre products which will just survive and not disrupt. Tip: investors are not looking to invest in these kind of products.

It will be the great product managers, who will be able to create the disruptive products for your users that you are aiming to develop. And, if you are thinking good is fine for now; just remember:

Mediocrity is the worst outcome of any product, any company. The best example being “Yo app” which had just one feature of sending to bros but it was able to raise $1 million because it was executed in the greatest manner but the copycats were not able to replicate that success.

12 Qualities of a Great Product Manager

Superb Product Analyst

Product managers should love exploring new products in the most critical manner as possible. They should be able to recognize and respect great products. They should be able to tell what makes a product successful or not. They should be able to identify what needs have not been met and how they can be improved.

If the product manager is truly passionate about the product, the attitude is carried over to the entire team and leads to the development of great products.

Mini-CEO

A product manager is a CEO of the product. He needs to understand the vision of the company, what the customer wants to achieve through the product and how the current product aligns with the vision of the company. He needs to know the product vision, how it will generate customer value and what is the differentiating advantage over its competitors. Once a product manager gets this clear in his mind and is able to clearly build the roadmap, then it just remains the matter of time the rest of the team will take to execute and bring it to life.

The product should also be break-down into iterations as no matter how many customer interviews you do before the product, the reviews you will get after development will be quite different from the same customers.

Understands customer perspective

A product manager who is able to empathize with the customer will also be able to understand the pain points of the customer. This understanding will help in incorporating the most important solutions first in the product. It is very rare to find somebody that is good and has relevant industry experience. At the minimum, the product manager should be able to understand the customer needs clearly.

If it is a consumer product, you have to be extra careful that the product manager is not projecting their needs and ignoring the larger target customer base. Ask them as to who the target market is and how is different from them.

Efficient Resource Manager

Product managers coming from a service based background are generally better resource managers as they tend to run 2–3 parallel threads of work, managing their troops efficiently. on the other side, a product manager focused on a single product will have to be creative to run 2–3 parallel threads of work. But it is a fight between quality vs quantity and there is a lot of difference in the amount of thought process that goes into and the result of both the approaches. For example, a Product manager can ask the front-end developer to also prepare the mailers in the meanwhile back-end set-up is being done or when the integration is going on.

Interviews customers personally

I see a lot of guys sitting in their office floating surveys for the customers and requesting their friends and family to fill it anyhow, I can`t see a single reason why this will work to deeply understand the customer needs. Product managers should recognize the importance of talking to customers go out there and build a nexus with customer needs. A good product manager will explore every opportunity to learn from the target customer, be it a personal interview, focused group discussions or even a customer support executive to understand the pain-points. Even if it means leaving the office and meeting customers personally on-ground, they are looking to gather insights into their needs and how they solve them today. If you are working on a consumer product, the opportunity to meet a target customer is endless and keep on evolving your questions according to the previous interactions. In order to be an effective interviewer, the product manager should be objective, can put people at ease and get them to answer the tough questions. They should be more oriented towards listening to the customer as compared to selling the vision of the product.

Targets the best user experience

A new product is launched almost every day and each of the product is targeted to the same set of customers, the amount of time a customer tends to give to a product has drastically decreased over the past 5 years. So, a Product acquires or loses a customer with just with a few interactions in a matter of seconds. In this hyper-competitive environment, an amazing user experience is a necessity and product managers should thrive to create it. For which, the product manager needs to pin down customer needs, translate them into job stories, design interactions diagrams, test and iterate on those diagrams and engage visual designers in building emotive visual designs.

Case: In  Partiko we had a beautiful product but we were not able to populate the best events, which meant the users had very few options to choose from. So, what did we learned from this example? Marketing and business development can also improve the User experience, so think on these terms as well while building the product.

In most startup teams, the financial situation does not allow interaction designer, visual designer to be hired. Instead, the product manager plays the important role of an interaction designer and have somebody else do the visual design. Even if an interaction designer is present, a product manager should be able to demand the very best. They should be able to tell when a design is good and when a design is bad. They should be able to tell if the design addresses the need in the most efficient way and if all the interactions fit together in an intuitive, self-describing and logical manner.

Track everything

In addition to knowing what the game is, a product manager should be able to keep score. Keeping score means identifying the right metrics and knowing when you have won. Success means identifying the current level of the metrics and the target of the team would be shooting for in the next release. Once a product manager is able to accomplish this, everybody in the team will have a clear understanding as to how the game is won. Data also helps in defining the success level of a product manager, so it is really crucial to track the important metrics. This kind of improvements takes a lot of time to track and iterate.

Prioritize Tasks

Every task that needs to be done is of different priority and One of the key attributes of a product manager is to be able to prioritize the backlog. Once the product manager and the entire team knows what game is been played and what needs to be achieved in the next iteration, prioritizing becomes an easy task. The product manager needs to map the product strategy down to the individual features and prioritize them in the right order across phases so as to maximize the winnings. If a product manager is able to do this well, all stakeholders within the company will buy into the prioritized backlog even though their pet features have not made the cut.

Excellent leader

Building a product is a collaborative process and it takes a product manager with collaborative nature to pull it off. Even though a product manager is the owner of the product, most of the people development team does not report to him, but I believe all the requirements should get processed through the product manager. Moreover, product requirements come from various functional groups and customers in a very haphazard manner and they all are considered important by those contributing them. This kind of an environment makes the product manager`s life difficult but he needs to fight for the rights over the product. He needs to be able to inspire others to follow him. He needs to be able to negotiate the next to-do-list at the same time prioritizing the backlog and appease all stakeholders. He needs to clearly communicate why a particular feature was chosen over the other one for the current release. At the same time he needs to be confident, assertive and at times lay down the law since the product manager will be picked up for any issue arising from the product.

Awesome at marketing

The product manager understands when is the right time to market the product and how it will be marketed. Why is this important? Because the data generated by initial customers will help in understanding the next iterations priority list. This can be defining strategy for a successful product

Understands How Business is being generated

This is especially important if the product is a 2-sided marketplace. Especially bringing the supplier side, products, and product managers are generally focused on the user/buyer/demand side and kind of don`t innovate on the seller/supplier side.

Case: A friend on mine sitting with me registered on letsventure.com as a angel investor { it is a big form with close to 50 data-points which goes for approval} he received a call from their investor relations team within 10 minutes. They connected and got him on-board. Result: 1. he was impressed by the urgency 2. he was in the perfect “Zone” to be contacted as he had recently submitted such a big form

Getting things done

Product managers need to be biased for action. They need to get things done. In order for a product to be shipped, there are hundreds of things that can go wrong and a product manager should be able to get down and dirty to get them done. He needs to QA, writes marketing copies, edits HTML, mock-up wire-frames, and even do PR. A product manager needs to do everything needed to make the product a success, as his reputation will depend on the success of the product.

Case: I was working with an Ed-tech startup{ for name check-out my profile} and when I joined most of the research work was done and as I was from a services background my job was to get it done. But, unfortunately the environment was not developer friendly and iteration rate was really high. Fortunately I had a good front-end resource and collaborating with him we were able to make a demo application for sales(the cycle in ed-tech is an yearly cycle, so if you are not able to market before the session then you will have to wait for the end of it to connect with the buyers.

At the end of the day, the product manager needs to make things happen. They should have the ability to gain the trust of all the team members, sell them on the vision of the product and lead them to the goal of the company.

At the end of the day, the product manager needs to get shit done anyhow possible.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this, I am reachable at [email protected]