What is Product Management, and Who is a Product Manager?
Product management is the process of bringing an idea to life and delivering it to the market as a successful product. A Product Manager is a professional involved in discovering a market gap, identifying people’s needs, creating the product, and ensuring that it meets the users’ actual wants.
According to Marty Cagan, “The role of product management is to discover a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible.”
Thus, a Product Manager’s job is to identify product opportunities and prioritize the use of the company’s resources. Product Managers collaborate across departments and sit at the intersection of business, technology, and user experience.
As a Product Manager, you’re responsible for:
Defining the product strategy.
Collaborating with technical and design departments.
Defining product requirements.
Planning and maintaining the roadmap.
Engaging with customers and partners.
The areas of the product management process include: Product Discovery: It’s about understanding user needs and market opportunities, identifying what problems users face, and how your product can solve them. This involves user research, market analysis, and competitor research.
Product Planning: This involves defining the product vision, roadmap, and goals. It includes prioritizing features, setting deadlines, and allocating resources. Defining the product vision involves asking questions such as:
Who are we building this product for?
What problem are we trying to solve for them?
How will this product make their lives better?
What is the ultimate impact we want this product to have?
Product Development: This is the phase of building the product. It involves working with cross-functional teams like engineers, designers, and quality assurance testers.
Product Launch: This phase is about getting the product to market. It involves marketing the product, building a launch strategy, and ensuring a smooth user onboarding experience.
Product Management: This is the ongoing process of monitoring and improving the product. It involves gathering user feedback, iterating on features, and analyzing product metrics
