Product Management Demystified
and how a Project Manager can start to transition to Product roles
This article was originally published as a guest post for the Bangalore chapter of the PMI. I’m not going to email this out but publishing here as well. If you like it, please consider sharing it. Thank you!
If you are reading this you either found the title catchy, or you were already thinking about a career in product or you aren’t sure what Product Managers do.
I’ll address the question of what PMs do but let’s start with the basic difference between Product Managers (PMs) and Project Managers (PjMs).
The product manager sets the vision for the product, does research, be it qualitative, quantitative, competitor, marketplace, macroeconomic or microeconomic signals and decides what to build. PMs require a LOT of help from all other teams. The PjM is the key person to help the PM act upon all the work, resourcing, follow up, keeping things on track, and budget. In several organizations PMs do the PjM work as well either out of necessity or the lack of a dedicated PjM.
Now let’s break down the roles of what a PM does from the lens of deliverables.
I’m going to take ‘The Top 10 Deliverables of Product Managers’ from Sachin Rekhi as reference and take deliverable list from it to expand on the gap that PjMs need to fill to be an effective PM. In larger organizations PM roles generally focus on execution but in smaller organizations a PM will straddle from vision and strategy to design and execution.
The following table addresses all these areas, levels at which these are performed (and this is not always the case in every company):
So, there you have it, all the necessary pieces to transition to product. At the very least even if you don’t want to transition the key takeaway is that PMs are conductors. You now probably have a sense that Product is a craft and the best way to learn it, like most anything else – do it.
If you do decide to transition, having done a transition into product, I can tell you first hand that the concepts are indeed very important but not enough. Consider building a product or app in your spare time or take on PM responsibilities at your existing company. Alternatively, shadow a PM that you respect and see if that person will serve as a mentor to help you transition. Good luck!
Thank you for reading, stay safe, be well!