Because i teach a course on product management at harvard business school, i am routinely asked what is the role of a product manager. When reading ben horowitzs the hard thing about hard things, he refers to his document on what makes a good product manager. The product manager and the sales manager both have a collaborative mindset and overlap in many of the teams they work with, but the contexts are different. In cracking the pm interview there are ample amount of resumes g. Books for product managers essential product management. It is an important organizational role especially in technology companies that sets the strategy, roadmap, and feature definition for a product or product line. What are the best books for product managers, especially. You can get by without testers, either because the coders are so good you dont need to test or through sheer bloody mindedness. Here are the books that ive found most helpful in my career as a product manager. Top 10 leadership qualities of a manager prepared by. Good product managerbad product manager andreessen. Good product managers know the market, the product, the product line and the competition extremely well and operate from a strong basis of knowledge and confidence. Behind every great product silicon valley product group.
Top 10 leadership qualities of a manager mccormick pcs. The design of everyday things, by don norman product design. Why companies need fulltime product managers and what. This results in better information about the customers, competition, and strategic potential for that group of products. Job descriptions of product manager responsibilities. The book is an easy read though i wish there were more industry examples, especially from the public domain and builds the overall process flow very well, and is. A good product manager will look for every opportunity to learn from the target customer. Check out these 10 mustread books for product managers. Download it once and read it on your kindle device, pc, phones or tablets.
The are responsible for right product right time and all that entails. How to build a product roadmap by walmart senior product. As the connective tissue between a companys various stakeholders, product managers. My personal experience is that the best of the product management folk are people who are good at finding synergies between product design engineering. Good product manager would never let the customers waiting, unless they had doubts about the quality of the product, and expected the demand to drop. A good product manager should be open minded, flexible and level headed.
The bad news is that the way companies approach man agement training falls short in three key areas. As an aspiring product manager pm, there are three primary considerations when evaluating the role. He understands the user and the users environmentsintimately so that he may create a product that solves theusers problem better than any other solution in the market. Ken is a partner at gv where he provides product and engineering support to more than 300 portfolio companies including uber, nest, slack, foundation medicine, and flatiron health.
Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading the product book. You can say that you would outsource the production, or do anything else to keep the dice rolling. Top 15 interview questions for product managers sample. Has responsibilities to manage from concept, to design, sample production, testing, forecast, cost, mass production, promotion, support, and finally product end of life. There is a lot of confusion about what a product manager does on a daytoday basis. Michael mccormick, management consultant september 2011 page 3. If i was starting my career over, i would choose product management again and get to it faster. The best pms have mastered the core competencies, have a high eq, and work for the right company for them. A good product manager does whatever it takes to make a product successful. Good product managerbad product manager andreessen horowitz.
Whats great about chris andersons free is that the former wired editorinchief forces us to take a long, objective look at how we are pricing our products. Marketing, sales, and engineering are the product managers main partners in. Product manager job descriptionthe product manager has. Whether you are already working as a product manager, thinking about a job in product management, or just work with product managers, one thing is certain. Imagine that your mobile phone is a brand new product in the market. Other job titles could include brand manager, industry manager, or customer segment manager. The good news is 99% of companies do offer some sort of management training and 93% of middle managers frequently attend it. Bad product managers focus team on how many features microsoft is. The book asks us to confront whether, in an era when more and more products and services are becoming free, we can afford to stick to the old paradigm of gating our offerings and making them available.
In reality, that comes down to handling a lot of little pieces at once. The role of the product manager is expanding due to the growing importance of data in decision making, an increased customer and design focus, and the evolution of softwaredevelopment methodologies. First and foremost, the good product manager is responsible for defining the right product at the right time. A good product description needs to speak to the ideal buyer first and foremost, your copy needs to speak to your ideal buyer. We would like to show you a description here but the site wont allow us. A good product manager is the curator of the best ideas, not the creator of the only ideas. Integrity one of the most important things a manager must remember is that his or her actions, and not words, set the modus operandi for the team. Related key assumptions are that there is a corresponding business owner in each of the brands, and that the products are generally online services intended for individuals. So you want to be a product manager read this first aha. Good product manager, bad product manager 1996 pdf hacker. It needs to include all the information she would be looking for but also, you need to highlight in a copy that you know who she is, write it in a language she uses and include the words that would make her buy. It is an exciting path for ambitious folks who want to make a real impact. Good product manager, bad product manager 1996 pdf. Many product leaders have told us that a great product manager will have the.
Product management leader priorities survey as part of some ongoing research im leading at siriusdecisions to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of btob product management organizations, were conducting a short 5question survey of product management leaders to gather more data on their challenges and priorities. Good product manager skills, qualities, and competencies are necessary, no matter what is the type f products you are responsible for a web, software, digital, fashion, pharmaceutical, or foodstuffs if you want to be successful in the field of product management, you have to create, develop and manage product marketing programs, have to be a great team leader and have to. Strategic thinking product managers skills complement skills brought by engineers, marketing and project managers. About this blog how to be a good product manager is a blog that provides resources and tips on good product management practices. A mechanical engineer turned brand manager turned product manager, he has over 10 years of experience across product management, marketing, and strategy. In this paper we discuss the role and responsibilities of the good product manager, and then we look at the characteristics of good product managers, where to find them, and. A good product manager takes full responsibility and measures themselves in terms of the success of the product. A juggler, a psychologist, a firefighter, and a ceo. If you ask the product marketing person or project manager to cover the product management role, even if the person has the skills and talents required for both, it. In many ways, the role of a product manager is similar in concept to a brand manager at a consumer packaged goods company. Even though he originally authored this several years ago, its still highly relevant and filled with great advice. So here they are 10 mustread books for product managers. Good product manager, bad product manager 1996 pdf 52 points by naftaliharris on oct 11, 2015. This document focuses specifically on product management in the context of a divlet small division in aol.
Product managers provide the deep product expertise needed to lead the organization and make strategic product decisions. Read our complete guide to writing a professional resume for product managers. They invest in collaborative brainstorming and know the best ideas will come from a team where everyone. A good highlevel map for a rookie product manager, especially in the context of b2c products. Managers are concerned with competitor products and change outside the company. In this phase of the product management process, ideas and feature requests from the product backlog are fleshed out into more detail, in order to better understand the impact and. A good product manager knows the context going in the company. What this means is that the product needs to have the right. Good product managerbad product manager by ben horowitz. This is no small task it involves a lot of people wrangling. They constantly worry about the tiniest of details, as well as the biggest of strategy questions.
Core competencies, emotional intelligence eq and company fit. What are some examples of great product manager resumes. These serve as good sources of inspiration for your product s evolution, and the good ideas should be locked down and developed further. Good product manager, bad product manager khosla ventures. Good product managerbad product manager andreessen horowitz 20120615goodproductmanagerbadproductmanager. And i would do it with more confidence knowing what i know now. In some cultures, the zebra symbolizes balance, agility, clarity, and sureness of path everything a good manager should be. Horowitzs piece on good product managers, bad product managers. A good product manager can shift hisher perspective smoothly, shifting smoothly between the big picture and the minutiae. Rather than feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of what needs to be done, their curiosity pushes them to remain committed and to become as qualified as possible to make. A product manager is typically a middle manager charged with managing and marketing existing products and developing new products for a given product line, brand, or service. Good product managers focus the team on revenue and customers. Share on twitter share on facebook share on linkedin. Whether youre a director or vp of product management i.
Product managers are the glue that bind the many functions that touch a productengineering, design, customer success, sales, marketing. In this section, we show you a simple, powerful framework for developing good managers who only get better with time and practice. Even it were a chance meeting, they are looking to gather insights into their needs and how they solve. The modern day good product managerbad product medium. Product owners and product managers allan kelly c allan kelly page 1 of 10 the product manager role of all the roles that play a part when software is created only one is essential. Bad product managers define good products that cant be executed or let engineering build whatever they want i. Product managers are responsible for guiding the success of a product and leading the crossfunctional team that is responsible for improving it. While it focuses more on managing technical and online products, most of the concepts are appropriate for broader product management purposes.