When I started my journey as a product manager, I was a fish out of water, completely clueless about the role, and utterly startled by the chaos I landed myself in.
I did what everyone in the 21st century does when they want to research on something: Google. A quick search on “product manager” yielded millions of results. There are plenty of self-help resources out there that talk about the role. There are inspirational stories of those who had gone through the joy and woe of building, launching, growing and sunsetting products. But the question on how to start from ground zero remained.
Still, before getting carried away with the “how”, let’s start with the “what”.
What is the role of a product manager?
After a year of wrestling around, I have picked out my favourite explanation of the role: a product manager is like the CEO of a startup. Suppose you (or your company) believe(s) there is a need in the market that can be addressed, and is worth addressing. Very loosely speaking, as a product manager, you set a vision, put together a strategy, pitch it to management to get funding, and gather a team. Together with your team, you iteratively build, launch, sell, and maintain a product that addresses the need identified, while making a profit for the company in the process
This is the case for a product manager who builds a product from scratch. It is also possible that a product manager take over a mature product, which was created by someone else. His/her role will then be to fine-tune the existing offering and continue building on top of it. In essence, product managers build and run businesses.
To help you have a better understanding of what product managers do on a regular basis, let me walk you through a day in the life of a product manager based on my personal experience in the next post.
