Want to manage a product? What all product managers are silent about

Original author: Rohini Vibha
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Of course, everyone in the development team does everything possible to release a cool product. But in case of failure, all the cones are strewed by one person - the product manager. Of course, not only he will get the nuts. But precisely for the product manager, this failure is not just a “working moment”, but a cross on all the work done.

How do you become product managers? Who is this man really? What exactly does he do all day, what is he worried about? How, in the end, is his relationship with the product, colleagues, users, and objective reality built? We have translated an article about this for you.

The translation of the article was done by the localization company Alconost .

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It seems to me - or is there really a lot of people rushing into product managers? Maybe it seems to me only because I myself am one of them. But lately, I constantly hear that people who are not product managers (consultants, future masters in business administration, developers) want to become them.

I would not be surprised if truly “everyone” wants to become a product manager. This is one of the few professions that does not require being an expert in any specific field. To manage the product, you do not need to know how to create data models or write code; no need to be able to design sites. If you know how to do it, good, but it’s not required.. It’s impossible to simply take and turn into a developer or designer, but you can become a product manager.

And then, how cute the role looks from:
  • you are a mini director;
  • you lead others;
  • you are an industry expert;
  • You decide how the product will look and feel today and in the future;
  • they pay you well;
  • you are the real boss.

But this, in general, is a joke. In fact, the position of product manager comes complete with tons of surprises. If you are not a product manager and not the one who worked with him in one team, then product management is not what you think .

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Briefly

In fact, managing a product is:

  • Feel, understand users and convey their voices to developers;
  • to facilitate the joint work of teams that solve different problems;
  • compromise on the product;
  • to achieve the ultimate goal in the conditions of fixed terms and resources;
  • lead people along the path of product creation;
  • be positive and practical;
  • make decisions based on a small amount of information.

Managing a product does NOT mean:

  • have a casting vote;
  • to be the only generator of ideas;
  • to be a designer;
  • to be a programmer;
  • manage quality assurance;
  • optimize sites;
  • write supporting marketing materials.

How do I know

I became a product manager unexpectedly for myself. I then graduated from college with a degree in Psychology and terribly wanted to return home, on the coast of the San Francisco Bay. The work there, of course, is a wagon and a small cart, but all of it is in the field of technology. I began to look for such a vacancy, in combination with which my specialization would not look ridiculous. To my surprise, I was offered an internship as a product manager at Intuit, a company notable for its technology and a favorable corporate climate.

Why "to my surprise"? Firstly, because I really didn’t know what the product manager was doing. “ Wow ,” I thought, reading and re-reading a job offer letter. -At all the interviews, I just did what I said about my passionate passions. Was that really enough? ". Secondly, because I defended my diploma in psycholinguistics. And the psychology of language, according to my latest data, has little in common with financial software.

My first product was QuickBooks. I was responsible for managing the beta version of our annual release. The experience I gained showed me all aspects of the profession of a product manager. Aspects not mentioned in job descriptions.

Four main aspects - here they are.

1. You do not manage the product, but the problem that it solves.

When I found out that I was going to manage QuickBooks, I almost got turned upside down. “ QuickBooks ?! - I was indignant. -Yes, this program is a hundred years old at lunch! "(Actually, of course, this is not so - but when you live in Silicon Valley, where new products appear every second, QuickBooks is perceived as some kind of gramophone). I was disappointed that I could not work as a “real” product manager and create “innovations”. I wanted to manage a stylish, fashionable, youth product.

But I was deeply mistaken.

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When you start managing a product that has at least one user, you quickly realize that your work is not only the product itself, no matter how sophisticated it may be. Your job is to deeply understand the problem the product is aimed at, and to solve every aspect of this problem

You will always have too many requests for new features - and too little time. Too many bugs - and too little time. You always have something to do. Suppose you have a ready-made product with which users have already developed tactics for interaction, and the company has already built business processes around this product. Who should you be to innovate in such a framework? Right. Superhero.

Being a product manager means making compromises between what your team can do for a given period of time and what users absolutely need. In a futile race over time, you will constantly be torn between the team, customers and business. Keeping a balance between short- and long-term product strategies (regardless of whether the idea of ​​your product came up today or 20 years ago) is already a small victory.

2. A product is cool if it is cool in the user's mind.

Managing our beta version implied not only weekly communication with testers by e-mail, but also conversations with them by phone. Sometimes I spent all day providing diverse technical support. At first, it terribly disappointed. “Why am I responding to problems? I wondered. “I had to manage the product!”

I spent a lot of time communicating with users and watching how they use the product. And I realized that the custom “ doesn't work ” actually means that the product does not work as they expected. User perception - this is reality, and it's not my business to explain to users what they are doing wrong. On the contrary: my conversations with users helped me understand what I was doing wrong.me . With this understanding, I came to developers and designers to brainstorm and make things work for users.

As a result, these hours and even days of communication with users saved my product. And it’s good that they saved, because in order to manage the product, you need, in fact, the product.

3. The product manager is neither a designer nor a developer.

I was told that to register the application in the AppStore, you will need the design of the selling page. As a newbie, I took the task literally - and got stuck in Photoshop layers and color palettes. Intoxicated by the release of endorphin that accompanies the creation process, I mailed the page to my boss. His response was not full of praise to the extent that I expected. The answer was: “Cool. Did our designer do this? As for me, let him play with the color scheme . ” “ Designer ?! I asked the computer. “ What is he talking about?” ".

This is how I gained understanding that the product manager is not involved in visual design (especially in a large and healthy company). And he does not write the code either. The design expert is a designer. Programming Expert - Developer. And you, the product manager, are an expert on whether the design and functionality satisfy the current needs of the user.

4. Not to be a star, but to control the universe.

On the first day of the QuickBooks team, my boss led me around the office and introduced me to everyone - literally everyone: support specialists, marketers, developers, designers, financiers. It overwhelmed me - but I was much more worried about how much time my boss “killed” it. Why didn't he start by introducing me to other product managers? “ Of course, I will meet them later, ” I decided. But it was not even the fact that he introduced me to such a huge number of people that put me in a much more awkward position, but the way he did it. “She will be responsible for the release of QuickBooks,” he told everyone. And I did not understand how I was going to release QuickBooks at all, if I had not even downloaded it to my computer ...

Weeks passed, and it became clear that I would not be releasing QuickBooks to the world, as I could if I were talking about pigeons at the graduation ceremony. On the contrary: my job is to promote the right brainstorming and communication between people (those with whom I was introduced on the first day), so that in the end we come to the decisions on which the release depends. This was shocking, and a little comforting (quite a bit). I did not have to offer the best ideas. I had only to make sure that the right people gathered in the room, able to offer a sea of ​​ideas from which I could choose the best.

After three years of product management in a large company and in a startup, I realized one important thing. Those passionate hobbies that I spoke about at the first interview as a product manager (deep understanding of other people, reducing pain in human life, writing, field research, the ability to consider patterns and trends in data, designing for people ) - they were exactly what my interviewers were looking for. After all, all this is necessary in order to successfully manage the product.

In my work, the product manager has been and remains a cause for concern. I feel stupid when I communicate with developers; I'd rather be able to design sites; I hate being an overseer; I'm worried if I’m not perceived as a simple JIRA understudy; I inadvertently hurt my inner researcher, convincing myself that I was doing thankless work. But when I see that the user is happy with my product, I understand that all this is worth it.

Being a product manager is not going crazy because of the word “manager” in the job title. Of course, you make decisions - but you are also responsible for all the advantages and disadvantages of your product. If the user does not understand your product, you, and not the marketers, were mistaken. If the product was released at the wrong time - you miscalculated, not strategists. If the user can’t find the button, you, and not the designers, were flawed.

And if the target user does not need your product - you are to blame, not him.

About the translator

Translation of the article was done in Alconost.

Alconost localizes applications, games and sitesinto 60 languages. Native translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, project managers 24/7, any format of string resources.

We also make advertising and training videos - for sites that sell, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliner, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.

Read more: https://alconost.com


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