Focus: Coordinates product lifecycles & vision and roadmaps
Future Product Manager Skills: What Do We Need?
Product managers need a variety of skills. It is essential that they have soft skills (such as leadership, communication, and storytelling) and hard skills (like artificial intelligence, data handling, and familiarity with product management and development tools). It is the role of professionals in the field to find the right mix of these two sets of skills.
In LinkedIn’s ‘The Most In-Demand Hard and Soft Skills of 2020’, AI, data, and UX design are the top three hard skills product managers are looking for in the future. The top three soft skills are leadership, communication, and creativity.
The role of product managers is to lead and make strategic decisions about products. There has been a misconception that product managers are “mini CEOs” of the product they manage. Still, it would be more accurate to describe them as product leaders at the intersection of business, technology, and user experience (UX).
The role entails a strong mix of strategic and tactical activities and facilitates important cross-functional collaboration, most notably between engineering, marketing, sales, and support teams.
The key to developing a unique product strategy and delivering real value to our customers is analyzing the market and the competition.
Responsibilities of a product manager;
- Establishing a strategy and vision
- Defining releases
- Evaluating ideas
- Prioritizing features
- Building and sharing strategic roadmaps
- Analyzing and reporting on progress
Typical time spent by digital product managers
McKinsey & Company reports that almost 80% of product managers are engaged in design activities. The same percentage also takes part in go-to-market decisions, with half of these also working on pricing decisions. A report by the same organization indicates that “60 percent of product managers are proficient in basic analytics, so they can study metrics and draw insights without the assistance of analysts” (Source).
As a Digital Product Manager, you are at the helm of the product. You will be responsible for ensuring the product is on track, and the product vision has been achieved. You will be responsible for influencing cross-functional teams. It’s a lot of responsibility, and you will have to work with many different people.
Producter is a product management tool designed to become customer-driven.
It helps you collect feedback, manage tasks, sharing product updates, creating product docs, and tracking roadmap.
