A Product Manager (PM) helps their team and company prioritize, develop, and deliver the right product to customers. PMs guide every step of a product’s lifecycle: from development, to positioning and pricing, by focusing on the product and its customers first and foremost. Product management is an appealing career path because PMs get to sit at the intersection of technology, business, and design. You wear many hats and learn multiple points of view.
As a product manager, you’ll be the advocate for the customer. You’ll learn their needs and translate those needs into product goals and features. Then you’ll make sure those features are built in a cohesive, well-designed way that actually solves the customer’s needs. You’ll focus on everything from the big picture to the small details. One day you might brainstorm the three-year vision for your team, while the next day you work through the details of the buttons in a dialog.
Product management is a highly collaborative role. As a PM, you’ll need to learn to lead your team without authority, influencing them with your vision and research. The product manager usually serves as the main liaison between the engineerings and other roles such as design, quality assurance, user research, data analysts, marketing, sales, customer support, business development, legal, content writers, other engineering teams, and the executive team.
You'll often hear is that "product management looks different wherever you go." Product management varies by company and by team, so doing research on how the role differs at companies is important!
As a PM, you'll be responsible for the following:
When comparing PM roles at companies, there are multiple factors that influence the nature of the role and its responsibilities. The following list are examples of important distinctions to consider; note that this is not an exhaustive list but a starting point!