Hey guys, I am Shrey, a product manager at Seekho. I will be doing a series of posts on my experience as a Product Manager and the lessons I’ve learned in my two and half year journey! 

So let’s start by discussing how you can make a career in product management. I will cover everything from what exactly product management is to the day-to-day responsibilities of a product manager.

What is Product Management

Before starting, I want to ask you guys what you think is the most crucial role of a product manager. It’s solving the problem of the user.

Of course, many others are involved, like the marketing, operations, and business teams. Still, the product manager is solely responsible for ensuring that the users are SATISFIED OR HAPPY and their problem is solved. 

So, let us take an example to understand this better.

Suppose you are the product manager of the Swiggy App. As a product manager, your role is to consider what problems a Swiggy user is facing? A Swiggy user is facing the problem of hunger, and the person is starving and wants to have good food on the proper budget. Now, the role of a product manager is to solve the user problem. 

Now the product manager will ensure that whenever someone checks out the Swiggy App, their experience is good, and they can sign up seamlessly. Their onboarding experience is good, so they get the value proposition of the swiggy App. The product manager will ensure that the swiggy user will get different restaurant options with different prices and varieties. To add a layer, the product manager will ensure that the App recommends the right restaurants to the users based on their experience. This makes the experience better for the users, right?

When you order from the Swiggy App, you see an expected delivery time and a person allotted for the delivery; that is the problem a product manager has solved for the users. If I am hungry, I would want to know how long would it take for my food to get prepared, and the Swiggy App does that for the users. 

In short, a product manager does everything required to deliver a quality experience to the user. And at the core – solving the problem for the user. 

Now I am sure you must have understood what a product manager is. 

Roles and Responsibilities of a Product Manager

Let us talk about the roles and responsibilities of a product manager. 

Now there are, of course, many roles and responsibilities of a product manager. If you want to know about the detailed roles and responsibilities, let me know in the comments section below, and I can do a detailed post on that. Let’s talk about the three primary responsibilities of a product manager. 

1. STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT

In product management, many people are working on the product. There is a design, technical, business, marketing, and operations team. When so many people work on a single product, there would be many inputs and suggestions from everyone. 

For example, the Business team wants to ensure that the user who is coming is paying for that. The marketing team ensures that the branding is perfect and that the user has a great experience. The design team wants to ensure the interface is user-friendly and pleasing to the eye. But who is that one person who is considering everything? It is the product manager. So as a product manager, your role would be to effectively communicate with different teams, considering their feedback given that you are solving the user problem at the core. So your primary role as a product manager is to have stakeholder management. 

2. CREATE A PRODUCT ROADMAP 

Now firstly, what is a product roadmap?

A product roadmap is a document that describes the steps you need to take to reach your product goals. It is a plan of action of how you would achieve the short-term and long-term goals, or in other words, what you plan to do for the next three months, six months, or a year. 

The job of a product manager is to make the product roadmap. It directly aligns with the business strategy.

3. UNDERSTANDING THE MARKET AND THE USERS

As a product manager, you aim to solve the problem of the users. So obviously, understanding the users is very crucial. How will you solve the problems the users are facing if you don’t know?

Now how does a PM do it? Well, there are many ways to do it. You could take surveys, and interviews, analyze data and sit with the users to understand their problems. Another role of the product managers is to understand the competitive market and define TAM, SAM, and SOM for the product? 

Conclusion

So let us discuss what we have discussed till now. In short:

  • A product manager’s main aim is to solve a user’s problems.
  • There are three primary roles of a product manager first is stakeholder management, the second is understanding the user and market, and the third is developing the product vision. 

That was it for today. Thank you so much for reading. Subscribe to the blog for more such content. 

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