Part II. The Role of the Product Manager
Product management is a career, not just a role you play on a team. The product manager deeply understands both the business and the customer to identify the right opportunities to produce value. They are responsible for synthesizing multiple pieces of data, including user analytics, customer feedback, market research, and stakeholder opinions, and then determining in which direction the team should move. They keep the team focused on the why—why are we building this product, and what outcome will it produce? The chief product officer is the cornerstone of the product team in companies, helping to tie together the business outcomes to the roadmap and to represent its impact to the board. Companies need to create a standardized product management career path to attract the right talent and to provide them with growth opportunities in order to remain competitive in today’s market.
It was my first month as a product manager, and I had just finished my first product specification document ever. I printed it for my boss to review and had been sitting there staring at it for five minutes through teary eyes, the way one looks at a beloved child. It had taken me a full week to prepare. Twenty-one pages long, it consisted of 14 beautifully designed mock-ups and every error case known to man. The developers were going to be so set. There would ...
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