What is a product manager?

In this Article, I'm going to talk about what product management actually is, and by the end of this article, you'll have a really solid understanding of the role.

Product management is a difficult role to define, which is why you don't really find any concrete, concise, good explanations just by googling it. The role of a product manager and their exact responsibilities change across different industries in different companies.

What I'll focus on here are the core tenets that make up product management. The first, and most important thing to know about product management is that product manager actually not a manager of anybody. No one reports to him, He's nobody's boss, and He definitely can't fire anyone.

This is actually by design because a product manager needs to continuously interact with a number of different people, get maximum collaboration from their engineers, and also the designers they work with. product manager, is kind of a blocker/enabler for engineers and designers.

The communication and enabling aspect of product management is a very important one.

Engineers are very good at engineering, and designers are very good at designing. So, it's best if these people spend their time doing what they're best at. While engineers focus on solving hard technical challenges, product managers are talking to various stakeholders, users, receiving feedback, and looking at metrics to decide what things can be built next, and which of those things is most important, and the best use of time.

Have you ever used a product, either software or something physical, where many things about that product are really good, but then there's one small piece that's just really terrible? If there's something wrong with any product, you can blame the product manager. Basically,

A product manager is someone who's responsible for that product being successful or not.

The product manager is many things, a communications hub, a prioritizer, a researcher, a presenter, but most importantly, they're responsible for the ultimate success of the product.