Product Management: The Product Manager’s Role

Product management is a high-level business function, focusing on developing and managing a product or service that creates value for the company. In doing so, the manager will identify customer needs and wants in order to set specifications for the product’s design.

The Product Manager’s Role” should provide a general overview of what this article is about, why it might be interesting or useful for readers and what they can expect to learn once they read it. 

    Product management is a high-level business function that focuses on developing and managing products and services that create value for companies. While it is often unclear what the role of a product manager entails, it involves a number of tasks such as setting specifications for products and services, defining and measuring success metrics for products and services, interviewing potential customers to learn their wants and needs, creating complex financial models that illustrate how products or services will contribute to growth in sales revenues or profits, developing long-term business strategies that involve creating value for customers through new products or services, initiating marketing campaigns to promote new products or services among consumers, and determining pricing strategies. 

    The first step in determining if you have the skills necessary to become a product manager is to understand if you have the required foundational knowledge pertaining to: finance and accounting (e.g. the basics of cash management, understanding the difference between operating and investing cash as well as understanding the methods and techniques used to successfully run a business); marketing (the basics of market segmentation, determining product category opportunities, pricing and positioning products) and sales (the basics of how sales cycles work, why sales are important to a product’s success). 

The basic functions performed by a product manager include:

    There are many different types of positions in product development and many different titles that can be used to describe this position.

    Many companies use checklists or inventories in order to determine how skilled their employees are at various tasks they perform at work. Examples of these inventories are the Sutherland checklist and the Tuckman checklist. Within a product development environment, managers typically perform steps on an inventory checklist.

    The Sutherland checklist is a tool that can be used to assess whether or not employees are skilled at various tasks. The purpose of the Sutherland checklist is to help managers determine which employees need additional help and which employees work best when they work independently and when they have additional support from others. The use of this type of inventory assists managers in knowing which tasks require more attention and support, as well as if there is anything that needs to be improved in order for employees to become more proficient at performing each task involved. It is important for managers to understand how employees work best and to allow them to work the way in which they know is most effective. 

    Managers use this checklist during a period of time (e.g., during a quarter, over a 6-month period) and then compare the results to past experience in order to identify where improvements can be made and how any necessary changes should be implemented.