product-management

Veamly Presents: A day in a Product Manager’s life.

But first, what’s a product manager?

When we say product manager we always imagine someone standing in front of a board, holding a sharpie, and drawing Venn diagrams. But the truth is actually quite beyond that.

A product manager is often considered the main responsible for the product. He sets up the strategy, the timeline, and the feature definition for that product line. He also takes care of the marketing, forecasting, and profit and loss (P&L) sides.

Some of the PM’s responsibilities include:

• Developing the product.• Conducting market research.

• Setting up product requirements.

• Determining specifications, pricing, and future plans for product introduction.

• Developing marketing strategies. 

What are the product managers' quests?

As superheroes, Product managers focus on 3 aspects of the product:

- Business: PMs work on optimizing product features to achieve the business goals while maximizing the return on investment (ROI).

- Technology: PMs spend more time every day with the development team than with anyone else inside the business.

- UX: PMs focus on improving the performance of the product. They test it, talk to users and get feedback first hand.

What are the product manager’s super powers?

A product manager’s daily quests include:

• Conducting thorough research on competitors to find out what's going on in the market.

• Holding conversations with customers (including participation in usability studies).

• Spec writing.

• Participation in UI wireframing (mockups).

• Project planning and schedule keeping.

• Leading meetings with senior team members to determine priorities and set the grid of the new work.

• Leading meetings with other groups to communicate priorities and schedules.

• Communicating to press contacts, key partners, the public (via social media outlets).

• Assisting with key strategic initiatives, business development activities, market launches, events, and important sales activities.

But with great responsibilities come great struggles.

PMs need to know everything there is on the market and their customers. Then, they have to mix all that data, extract the needed information, and top it up with a healthy dose of creativity to finally come up with a product that perfectly fits their vision.

In order to meet their deadlines and get the product out on time, PMs also have to solve problems as they pop up, minimize delays due to miscommunication, and closely manage the different departments of their team.

The silver linings of being a Product Manager Superhero!

Sure it can be a tough job but it’s just about the most fun you can have in the business field – certainly the most fun you’re going to get paid to do. Product managers get to define the very essence of a product, design solutions for their customers, work with every single member of the team which is why they play a very large part in the business’s success. We can say that they are the unsung heroes of the tech world.

PMs skillfully orchestrate all the efforts of the technical and business team in order to give birth to a product that perfectly solves the customer’s issues. THAT is why product managers are usually seen as the heroes behind the curtains. PM heroes are very few and far between, making them highly sought after, highly paid, and key members of a startup.

PMs are great communicators as their job requires and mainly depends on them to clearly communicate information and calls to action to the different parts of their business and technical team. And you know what? There is nothing we value more at Veamly than, EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION!