We read several online articles, the most useful of which were The Product Mangement Triangle, 3 Types of Product Management, Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager and So You Want to be a Product Manager.
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(highlight:: Product managers help their company build the right product for their customers.
Typical activities include talking to users about what they need from the software, analysing data on how people are using it, planning the long term development of the product, clearly specifying what needs to be built, meeting with different teams in the business to get their ideas for the product and let them know what’s being built, and prioritising between options for what gets built.)
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There are three criteria that are necessary to make a successful piece of software: it needs to be valuable to users, valuable to the business, and feasible to build technically.
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Product managers often do project management too, but the roles are distinct. The difference is that product managers figure out what should be built, whereas project managers coordinate plans that have already been decided.
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Product managers set the overall goals for the product and coordinate between different teams, while user experience designers concentrate on talking to users and turning that understanding into designs to be implemented. The two often work together very closely and product managers have to have a good understanding of what users want.
- View Highlight
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Check out day-in-the-life profiles here and here.
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Product managers are frequently interrupted and find it difficult to find long stretches of time to focus on a task. Although this makes their day more varied, it makes it difficult to get into a satisfying state of flow. You should test out whether you enjoy this kind of multitasking work before you get into product management.
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As a product manager, you will rarely use your existing specialist skills, such as programming or design, in depth. This could make it hard to switch back into a more specialist role if you spend a long time in product management. Also, unlike product management, programming and design skills can be easily used to freelance. Without these skills you’ll be less able to support yourself while working on a startup, nonprofit, or research project.
- View Highlight
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(highlight:: You should consider this option if:
• You have exceptional communication and people skills. For example, you’ll need to be able to:
• Adapt information about the software for different departments in the company using language they understand (e.g. translate tech lingo to people in marketing, and marketing lingo to software engineers).
• Understand the interests of different groups in a company and resolve problems caused by misaligned interests between different teams.
• Translate vague ideas for changes to the software into descriptions that are specific enough for software engineers to build.
• Get to know and befriend a wide range of people in a company.
• You’re fascinated by and have an understanding of software. You’ll be a good fit if:
• You want to play a role in building software, rather than working in one of the supporting non-technical roles such as marketing.
• You’re curious about how technology works and willing to take part in technical discussions with software engineers.
• You have experience working with software engineers.
• You’re happy multitasking, having lots of meetings, and being interrupted a lot, and have excellent organizational skills to handle this.
• You want to work in tech but lack programming or university-level quantitative skills (but programming skills are still an advantage).
• You’re a software engineer but you have stronger communication and people skills than your peers and would like more varied work.)
- View Highlight
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(highlight:: Here are some examples of how you might gradually take on more product management responsibilities from other roles:
• From software development: take charge of writing clear descriptions of what needs to be built, help prioritise tasks, talk to designers to understand the reasons behind their designs, offer to help test new designs with users, write documents for the sales team to help them understand new parts of the software so that they can sell it better.
• From user experience design: write descriptions of new features for engineers and get feedback on whether they were clear, talk to engineers about how the product is built and what kinds of features are easy or hard to build, run presentations and workshops to communicate what you’ve learned from users to the wider business and to learn what their goals are.)
- View Highlight
-

We read several online articles, the most useful of which were The Product Mangement Triangle, 3 Types of Product Management, Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager and So You Want to be a Product Manager.
- View Highlight
-

(highlight:: Product managers help their company build the right product for their customers.
Typical activities include talking to users about what they need from the software, analysing data on how people are using it, planning the long term development of the product, clearly specifying what needs to be built, meeting with different teams in the business to get their ideas for the product and let them know what’s being built, and prioritising between options for what gets built.)
- View Highlight
-

There are three criteria that are necessary to make a successful piece of software: it needs to be valuable to users, valuable to the business, and feasible to build technically.
- View Highlight
-

Product managers often do project management too, but the roles are distinct. The difference is that product managers figure out what should be built, whereas project managers coordinate plans that have already been decided.
- View Highlight
-

Product managers set the overall goals for the product and coordinate between different teams, while user experience designers concentrate on talking to users and turning that understanding into designs to be implemented. The two often work together very closely and product managers have to have a good understanding of what users want.
- View Highlight
-

Check out day-in-the-life profiles here and here.
- View Highlight
-

Product managers are frequently interrupted and find it difficult to find long stretches of time to focus on a task. Although this makes their day more varied, it makes it difficult to get into a satisfying state of flow. You should test out whether you enjoy this kind of multitasking work before you get into product management.
- View Highlight
-

As a product manager, you will rarely use your existing specialist skills, such as programming or design, in depth. This could make it hard to switch back into a more specialist role if you spend a long time in product management. Also, unlike product management, programming and design skills can be easily used to freelance. Without these skills you’ll be less able to support yourself while working on a startup, nonprofit, or research project.
- View Highlight
-

(highlight:: You should consider this option if:
• You have exceptional communication and people skills. For example, you’ll need to be able to:
• Adapt information about the software for different departments in the company using language they understand (e.g. translate tech lingo to people in marketing, and marketing lingo to software engineers).
• Understand the interests of different groups in a company and resolve problems caused by misaligned interests between different teams.
• Translate vague ideas for changes to the software into descriptions that are specific enough for software engineers to build.
• Get to know and befriend a wide range of people in a company.
• You’re fascinated by and have an understanding of software. You’ll be a good fit if:
• You want to play a role in building software, rather than working in one of the supporting non-technical roles such as marketing.
• You’re curious about how technology works and willing to take part in technical discussions with software engineers.
• You have experience working with software engineers.
• You’re happy multitasking, having lots of meetings, and being interrupted a lot, and have excellent organizational skills to handle this.
• You want to work in tech but lack programming or university-level quantitative skills (but programming skills are still an advantage).
• You’re a software engineer but you have stronger communication and people skills than your peers and would like more varied work.)
- View Highlight
-

(highlight:: Here are some examples of how you might gradually take on more product management responsibilities from other roles:
• From software development: take charge of writing clear descriptions of what needs to be built, help prioritise tasks, talk to designers to understand the reasons behind their designs, offer to help test new designs with users, write documents for the sales team to help them understand new parts of the software so that they can sell it better.
• From user experience design: write descriptions of new features for engineers and get feedback on whether they were clear, talk to engineers about how the product is built and what kinds of features are easy or hard to build, run presentations and workshops to communicate what you’ve learned from users to the wider business and to learn what their goals are.)
- View Highlight
-