The "good" PM

Most companies understand that they need a product department or at least a dedicated product manager. But if I screen through the job boards I often get the impression that many companies misunderstand the role of a product manager or often reduce him to a scrum master. I hope that my perspective on that topic can give some more inspiration or might even trigger some changes.

From my perspective the skill-set of a “good” product manager consists of  three columns: domain knowledge, methodical know-how, and soft skills.

“Being the guru” – Domain Knowledge

This skill column itself consists of three pieces: the product, the market and the future. 

Each product manager needs to know his product the best. It should be impossible to ask him a question about the product that he cannot answer. It is like being the chef in your own kitchen. While stirring the port wine sauce you can open the second drawer and grab the can with the nutmeg without even watching. If somebody discusses parts of the product with the PM he always leaves these conversations with the impression that he is just a little grain of dust in the universe.

The product manager has to understand the market. He needs to know all of the competitors and their products. He needs to understand their strategies and the reasons behind. He should be the first one that notices if a competitor is changing the product or a new player is entering the market. The PM needs to understand the requirements and problems of the customers. It is not enough to understand just most of the existing customers but also other potential customer segments.

To make it not too easy for the PMs, they also need to be able to predict the future. They need to understand small changes in the market and predict needs for new products and other opportunities before they even happen. The PM is the trend scout that can create the product of tomorrow which no customer can imagine today.

It is not easy to find a “guru” for your company, especially if what you are doing is no mainstream work. My business is mobile advertising. Guess how many gurus you can find there. The good news is that if you find a smart and open-minded person, a fast learner, that covers the other columns, he will fastly be able to fill that gap.

“Being the carpenter” – Methodical Knowledge

Like a carpenter each PM needs a large set of tools that helps him to master the different challenges of his daily work. These tools can be distinguished into three different categories: processes, research methods, and supporting tools. 
As a part of the process knowledge comes of course a deep understanding of agile development processes like Scrum and Kanban but he should also be firm in the old techniques like the waterfall development (you have to know your enemy) and know about agile anti-pattern. There are more processes he needs to master and own. The information flow from customers via support into the product decisions. The updates and documentations about new products via marketing to the customer.
A product manager should also be firm in project management techniques if this might be part of his job.
When it comes to the extraction of information from customers or other stakeholders, he needs to rely on his methodical research knowledge. He should understand the differences between qualitative and quantitative customer research methods and he should understand the need and usage of KPIs in the overall product development process. A product manager should have some basic understanding of statistics. Without knowing what significance means he might draw wrong conclusions from statistics he is imposing. A product manager should understand the differences between structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews and be able to apply the right methods for the right situations. If he is asked if he would like to setup a focus group or a key informant interview in order to derive some conclusions there should be no hesitation in giving the right answer.

Fortunately, there are lots of different tools out there that support the daily PM’s work like

Silverback (http://silverbackapp.com/) or Mixpanel (https://mixpanel.com/) and the PM should be able to name at least a few of them.

The good news is that finding a carpenter is not as difficult as finding a guru. The base of becoming a first class carpenter is a solid education and a lot of experience.

“Being the diplomat” – Soft Skills

A product manager needs some soft skills in order to master his profession. His core competence should be the communication. He needs to talk to developers, to management, to customers, to competitors, and to marketing. He needs to be able to explain things on different abstraction levels. He should be able to talk tech as well as he needs to be able to talk business but he also needs to listen. He needs to convince with awesome presentations and visionary stories. He needs to create confidence and he has to establish enough authority that even the CEO because of the PM’s expertise accepts a “no” about a product change.

A product manager must be a team-player, he will neither be able to build a product by himself nor will he be able to identify all requirements without any input.

He needs to be able to structure and prioritize. There will always be more work on his desk than he is able to handle. Often he will be a negotiator between different stakeholders of the product. He needs to decide which requests to prioritize, which to postpone and which to decline. Especially in the later case his previously mentioned communication skill with a dash of empathy are of high value. 

If you are going to hire a new product manager, try to keep these three columns in your head. Each of it  helps to master different challenges. Analyse the requirements of your company and which role the PM should really fulfil, but please don't degrade him to a pure scrum master.