Who is this product Manager?

Product management is one of those professions where it is difficult to give a clear definition (applies to any organization), partly in view of the fact that in every company the work is done in different ways. Not long ago, I spoke on the topic "who are the product managers?" with your friends who are just starting to work in this field, as well as with those who have already achieved some success in this area. Now I want to share this experience with you.

The main responsibility of a product Manager is: Help your team (and company) to deliver the required product to its customers.

If you break this process into smaller parts:

1. To help your team

The best product managers spend all their time on the highest priority things that help their team.

Mainly, it concerns: (a) coordination – need to ensure that the team effectively plan, make decisions and work together with clearly defined goals and objectives; and (b) interaction of care that everyone understood what was happening when and why, especially now, in light of the inevitable changes.

Footnote

"by "team" I mean a certain number of people working together as on the development of the product itself and all others involved in its promotion, including designers, engineers, workers, quality assurance and responsible for technical documentation and marketing departments, customer development, technical support, legal, etc.

Many believe that the product Manager is the Executive Director, or whoever "wrote" the BOM; however, I think such a view distorts the influence and authority of the product Manager. The best teams create such working conditions in which the team feels his involvement in the project, where everyone contributes and has the opportunity to voice their suggestions and ideas. The best product managers coordinate the key decisions utilizing each team member, they are responsible for the identification of differences, eliminate downtime, and finding a common solution (or at least to ensure that all involved in the process). This does not mean that you need to do what the product Manager thinks is right. I don't want to say that product managers should be their own good ideas, but the goal is not to find a team that's just doing what they were told. Instead, the best product managers build a process based on collaborative decision making, involving all team members.

From a tactical point of view, help your team often is to record and summarize the notes after a long meeting, or writing a specification, which reflects in written form the agreed and planned actions. Often noticed that writing a good report may take more time than the meeting itself. And, often, working together with people from your vast command means to gather feedbacks and share plan of action, to do all that no obstacles or traps not allowed the team to collapse out of your way to deliver the product to the consumer. Twitter we used to call it "the involvement of all groups in the extended command "ACT SOLID"

ACT SOLID

the Abbreviation of Intelligence (Analytics), Communication (Communications), Reliability/trust (Trust), Support departments (Support), Operations (Ops), Legal (Legal), international (International), Designer (Design).

At a time as engineers write the code and designers design the look and graphics, product managers do not give tangible characteristics of the final product. However, ultimately, I believe that the success of the team and of the product depend on the effectiveness of product managers.

2. (and the company)

As product Manager, you must understand the overall goals and objectives of the company, and how your team is consistent with the shared vision. The best product managers that I had the opportunity to meet or work perfectly well understood – they are often appealed to the vision of its founder and did everything that worked for their team, helped them get closer to realizing this goal. They could clearly articulate how the goals and indicators regarding their product can help the overall strategy of the company. And they believed that their team should work for the benefit of the entire company, together with other teams, and not just doing what they thought was important. One thing I always try to find out from candidates in the interview for the position of product Manager: this is how often they relate their own vision with the overall vision of the company, in particular, the vision of the founder, the Executive Director or Vice President of their group. In the same way as in the case with my team, I'm not saying that product managers should be their own good ideas, but they should be able to implement their ideas in accordance with the main vision and goals of the company, and to enlist the support of the parent office colleagues.

3. to deliver

In fact, nothing is more important than the delivery of products to its customers. You can be a great assistant for your team when you create cool things, finding the right product or the implementation of a shared vision, but it will have value only if the result of all this, you will help your team to release the product to market. Great product managers are aware of this thin line between developing the right product and release it to the market. Teams constantly have to test, test your products, listen to feedbacks, but in any project there comes a point when the team must state that the product is ready, sufficiently (although, of course, he never is 100%). Teams with clear goals and objectives, and a good understanding of the consumer and what he needs, can find the necessary compromises. Usually a good product management contributes to this process.

4. the desired product

Delivery is important, but the best product managers also help the team make the right product. To create something that doesn't exist yet is always fun but not always successful. However, and this is the task of the team is to be creative and come up with an original solution which will embody the necessary product to address the needs of the consumer. Good product managers have a good feel of what is right and what is not, they also know how to listen to the feedbacks of the testers and those who tested the product. They perfectly catch the essence of the ideas of the founders and leadership, and do everything to meet her.

More importantly, as soon as the delivery has taken place, the best product managers can figure out whether the delivered product is "thus". They should work closely with the team to ensure measurability of the main characteristics of the product, and also the fact that you can get answers to hard questions about whether or not people actually a product or not. After the product is delivered, they scrutinize the data and help the team figure out what parts are working and which are not; then together quickly to develop a plan for improvement and further testing.

5. its customers

The most difficult part in the development of any product is to define its basic purpose of use, that is, a description of who will use the product and why. The best product managers act as advocates for their consumers and represent their interests at almost every meeting where decisions are made upon the product.
This requires a deep understanding of your target audience: what are their difficulties and challenges; and how your product will bring them value and meet their needs. Good product managers are constantly listening to the feedbacks of the users, whether usability, meeting with customers in the field, reading emails technical support or tweets, or work with people from your company who do this every day. But the best absorb all this valuable information and convert it into a product vision that helps the team to be confident in the fact that it makes a really necessary product.

The absolute truth is that there is no such product that would satisfy all; it is a continuous process of constant development and improvement of the product. The best product managers are those who rolled up their sleeves and help your team make the journey.

Who shares the basic principles outlined in this article — write to the PM. We need people like that in the command Yandex.Browser.

the Translation is done in the framework of the summer school start-UPS Tolstoy Summer Camp and project MetaBeta.

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru