A product manager directs the vision, strategy, and development of a product. They ensure that the product solves customers’ problems and helps in making better business decisions.
Gaining proficiency in a core set of fundamental skills is the first step towards becoming a product manager. In this article, we will cover in detail how to become a successful product manager. According to Glassdoor, the average product manager’s salary ranges between ₹ 18,00,000 to ₹ 31,10,000 per annum.
Table of Content
Who is the Product Manager?
Product management is a professional role that includes being in charge of an organization’s product development. A product manager is responsible for defining a product’s functional specifications, managing feature releases, and owning the overall product strategy.
Why Pursue a Career in Product Management?
Product management careers are excellent because they combine creativity, problem-solving skills, and leadership abilities.
- As a product manager, you build products that may help solve real problems for human beings.
- To turn an idea into reality, you have to work on many teams, such as engineering, design, and marketing.
- It is very exciting because your hands are on the wheel of everything, driving the product vision and making important decisions.
- It is also a very mature role with an excellent career future and a good salary scale.
- So, if you like interacting with people and managing projects where you see your ideas come into form, then a career in product management can definitely be fulfilling!
How to Become a Product Manager: 6 Actionable Steps
- Get to Know the Basics: Product management is defined through books, videos, or online courses.
- Build Skills: Communication, problem-solving, leadership, and other key skill areas, including customer needs.
- Practice Experience: Try working on small projects and internships to learn to manage tasks, teams, and ideas.
- Network with Experts: It helps to meet them through LinkedIn or events or groups within communities.
- Learn Tools: Jira, Trello, and Figma are used in product management.
- Apply to Jobs: You can begin by applying to entry-level product roles or transitioning into product management from your current occupation.
What Does a Product Manager Do?
The duties of a product manager revolve around defining and managing an organization’s comprehensive product line. The most crucial responsibilities include product definition from the engineering, design, marketing, sales, and customer support sides.
- Product Strategy: Defines this as the vision and strategic direction as they relate to the product.
- Product Development: You would oversee it, making priorities and decisions to ensure timely and successful delivery.
- Market Analysis: Conducting market intelligence regarding trends, opportunities, and threats.
- Customer Engagement: Gathering feedback from customers to ensure that the product meets customer needs.
- Performance Monitor: It refers to assessing product performance and making appropriate adjustments based on data.
Qualification Requirements for a Product Manager
Educational Background
- A degree in business, marketing, engineering, computer science, or other closely related subjects.
- Advanced degrees such as an MBA can be an advantage but are not always a prerequisite.
Relevant Experience
- A similar level of experience in positions like project management, software development, marketing, and sales.
- Product management skills are eventually required for internships and other small positions.
Knowledge of The Market
- An understanding of the industry and its customers’ needs.
- Awareness of competitors and trends.
Technical Knowledge
- Know how to use product development tools and processes such as Agile Scrum.
- A basic knowledge of software development or design is preferred.
What Are the Necessary Skills for Product Managers?
The skills listed below are the most required, and they are also mentioned in the product manager job description. Hence, having command of these skills as a product manager increases your chances of getting hired.
Leadership skills
Every successful product has a unified team behind it that is focused on achieving the same objectives. As the product manager, you are in command. However, you must take charge of the group without formal power.
Project Management Skills
Introducing new features and products to the market requires extensive planning and coordination. A never-ending list of duties, obligations, and crucial deadlines can be overwhelming. Strengthen your project management abilities to become more disciplined.
Financial Skills
You resemble an accountant for your product in many respects. You must be able to assess financial data, including pricing, operating expenses, and recurring revenue. To increase your knowledge, collaborate with coworkers in sales, business development, and finance.
Analytical Skills
You must track your progress as you implement your strategy and plan. You will have a tonne of information on product usage at your disposal. However, data only provides you with a limited view. You can uncover trends and delve into the “why” behind the stats if you have strong analytical abilities.
Strategic thinking skills
Strategic thinking is essential when defining your product vision and the course you will take to realize it. In the end, your product’s success is based on your ability to go beyond the tactical work you do on a daily basis and create a Complete Product Experience.
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Key Responsibilities and Product Management Experience
- Define and develop a production strategy that can be applied in practice to the articulated product vision of product manager responsibilities towards production management functions.
- Direct and coordinate the engineering team from initial planning until the final product is launched.
- They also provide outputs to another development team.
- In practice, this requires the product manager to identify a customer problem or a problem that the company tries to solve.
- Once the solutions are validated and implemented, they work with the design and development teams to prepare for launch.
- In most companies, it is up to the product manager to determine which issues are urgent for attention.
- An essential part of this will be confirming that the consumer problems are problems worth solving right now.
- In addition, they present the strategic plan for new products, improved competitor positioning, and employer seeking.
- The PM serves as a customer advocate, voicing the needs of the user’s and/or buyer’s perspective.
- Then, closely collaborate with engineering, sales, marketing, and support to make sure that the objectives of customer satisfaction and the business case are being fulfilled.
The tools listed below help product managers make better decisions, increase communication, and streamline processes.
- Aha!: Creating product strategies and visualizing roadmaps.
- Productboard: Prioritizing features as a result of customer feedback.
- Roadmunk: A simple tool for creating and sharing roadmaps.
- Jira: Very common for tracking development and managing agile workflows.
- Trello: Manages visually with boards, lists, and cards.
- Asana: Manages and tracks assignments, collaborations, and everything else.
- Slack: Team communication with alerts.
- Miro: Brainstorming and planning on a virtual whiteboard.
- Confluence: Make documentation tidy and shareable.
- Google Analytics: Measure site or app performance.
- Mixpanel: Looks at users’ behaviour from capturing events to milestone usage throughout their lifecycle.
- Amplitude: Coax the most detailed understanding of what users do.
- Typeform: Make the most engaging interactive survey and form tools.
- Hotjar: Capture honest user feedback and behaviour with heatmaps.
- User Testing: Test the product with real users.
- Figma: For group interface design.
- Sketch: A tool for creating product mockups.
- InVision: Creates interactive prototypes for testing.
Which Certifications and Courses Are Best for Product Management?
Though many product management courses are available online, not all of them will be a fit for you. Select the school best suited for product management courses to gain a competitive advantage. Some of the renowned universities in India offer online certification courses. Find suitable product management courses for you according to your budget and career aspirations.
| Course Name | Provider | Fees |
|---|
| Product Management Certification | Intellipaat | INR 50 thousand |
| Advanced Executive Certificate in Product Management | IIT, Guwahati | INR 2 lakh |
Product Manager Salary and Job Outlook
Your product manager’s pay will be influenced by your geographic location, the location of your business, and the number of years of experience you have. According to Zippia, San Diego offers the highest average yearly compensation, while New York has the highest demand for the profile.
- Salary.com provides slightly varied ranges of salaries. According to them, Product managers earn an average of $72,466 per year, with compensation ranging from $56,990 to $81,522 per year.
- According to Glassdoor, a product manager’s salary is, on average, $113,446 per year. Depending on their education and location, they can earn between $76,865 and $227,459 per year.
- Based on the most recent data from ZipRecruiter, the nationwide average salary is $94,704 per year, with the low and high combinations seeming to be $31,000 and $146,500, respectively. What Distinguishes a Product Manager from a Project Manager?
What Distinguishes a Product Manager from a Project Manager?
| Aspect | Product Management | Project Management |
|---|
| Primary Goal | Design a product that meets customer requirements and aligns with the business mission. | Ensure activities and projects are completed efficiently, on time, and within budget. |
| Key Responsibilities | Develop product vision, prioritize features, and collaborate with teams to deliver value to users. | Manage resources, schedules, and team coordination to achieve execution-oriented objectives. |
| Additional Functions | Strategic planning, market research, and gathering customer feedback to shape the product’s roadmap for long-term viability. | Focus on project delivery, adjusting to scope and timeline variations as needed. |
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How to Expand Your Professional Network as a Product Manager.
Ways to Build Your Professional Networking in Product Management:
Participate in Industry Events and Conferences
Attending product management meetups, webinars, and industry conferences is a great way to connect with others in the profession. It allows you to acquire knowledge from others and probably create relationships in a relaxed atmosphere.
Engage on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is an excellent way to connect with other product managers. Talk about your experiences, comment on others’ posts, and leave insightful messages to initiate and grow communication relationships.
Join Online Communities
Participate in many online communities about product management, such as product management forums, Slack groups, and Reddit, where people can share ideas with others and discuss and learn new things from others.
Request for Informational Interviews
You can talk to experienced product managers or potential equivalents and ask them to spend an hour informally discussing their jobs and what they have learned over the years. Such a request can show initiative and build the network without saying, “I want a job.”
Offer Value
Networking isn’t just about taking. Share resources, lend advice, or connect people, and suddenly, your network is helpful to others. In turn, it makes people want to connect with you.
Collaborate with Other Teams
As a product manager, you must work cross-functionally with many teams, including design, engineering, and marketing. Building strong relationships with this team and others in different departments will help you build your network in your organization.
Join Local Product Management Groups
Most cities have local product management meet-ups or groups where you can register, connect with people, and learn about what is going on in the local industry.
Product Strategy and Roadmap
The product strategy defines the product’s goals and aligns them with the business goals and customer needs. This answers questions such as what the product ultimately wants to be, what its specific targets are, and how it differs from the competition.
A Product Roadmap is a high-level planning document that describes how the product progresses from concept to the various stages of development, including launch. It assists teams in prioritizing tasks, tracking progress, and ensuring that everyone is on the same page regarding the product’s long-term goals.
Key Components in the Product Roadmap:
- Resources: Identifies where teams, budgets, and tools get assembled to make things happen.
- Timeline: The timing of when particular features or updates will go live.
- Milestones: Major achievements, such as the start of beta testing or full tactical rollout.
- Features & Priorities: The most essential features and the order in which they are worked on.
- Feedback Loops: Sources that bring in customer feedback toward the enhancement of the product.
Transition to product management as a career.
Transitioning is a challenging and rewarding process in product management. To make the critical leap, one must know the role very well, assess one’s skills, learn the fundamentals, find the right experiences, build a nice portfolio, and know that much about the field. Remember, perseverance and constant learning are the keys to success.
Conclusion
We hope that this blog will help beginners by offering some advice on how to make the most of their abilities, understand product management, the important steps of becoming a product manager, the roles and responsibilities, the future scope of the profile, and other information that you may need to kickstart your career.
Carry on to Intellipaat’s Executive Postgraduate Certification in Product Management from IIM Ranchi to gain expert theoretical knowledge, practical hands-on skills, and industry-matching certification to become a successful product manager.
FAQs
1. Is it challenging to become a product manager?
A product manager, for example, is a highly respected and esteemed position in an organization that demands an above-average work ethic, dedication to learning, and perseverance in the face of hardship. It will help if one puts in that hard work to consider being valued by the companies in terms of the added value that one’s efforts can bring to their firm and its products and services.
2. What qualifications are required to work as a product manager?
Almost all positions in product management require at least a master’s degree in business. It also inevitably gives your CV an advantage against your competition, as it equips you with the necessary skill set to comprehend the modern business world.
3. How many years will it take to become a Product Manager?
Most companies require you to possess 2–5 years of prior experience in various product management roles before they hire you. This experience could be in roles such as Product Owner, Associate Product manager, or any such post.