What Does a Software Product Manager Do?

The role of product manager is viewed as a business function to maximize ROI in the product, maximize market share, revenue, etc. for business success. Product managers work with engineering and across the business to make sure the software product is well built and defined. 

I personal think an entrepreneur should be a product manager in his soul with product manager skills.

What does a product manager do?

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Finding and executing product market fit.

It is the product manager’s responsibility to run the entire product and project roadmap, if possible without relying on a project manager. These are what he/she does:

• Market sensing -  Gather market data or intelligence, disseminate or spread the data within the organization and act on the data or information gathered.
• Gather requirements.
• Help to define a product vision and strategy.
• Work with world-class engineers.

Characteristics

Some people views Product Management as the embodiment of the business (requirements), the user/customer (needs), and the technical (knowledge) side of the company. The best products are driven by business and user needs first, not by the technology.

I like how Saeed Khan views 6 important characteristics of a Product Manager:

• Don’t just sound smart; act smart and be smart.
• Be technical without becoming a technologist.
• Measurement-Driven - “Spidey-sense” instincts are good; hard data is way better. You need to have the right type of evidence, right type of research and validation, and associate them with type of revenue. Once you have them, you can walk into a meeting with confidence and lay the information down.

• Leadership - The 4 Cs of Leadership: credibility, commitment, communication and courage.
• Collect information and share internally - Be an integrator, translator and communicator; don’t be a terminator.
• Own the product from conception to completion and beyond.

The above characteristics are also applicable to all C level executives.

Job Description Example

Here's a product manager job description Google put out around late 2013:

"Our Product Management team is responsible for defining and launching Google's products across a variety of countries and markets we do business in. Product Managers follow a multi-disciplinary approach to making sure the right product is built, to delight the customer and to provide better solutions than the competition. While Google PMs work extensively with engineering to define and develop core functionality and feature sets, leading matrix teams through the end to end of a product's lifecycle (eg marketing, legal, sales) is equally essential."

"The Product Management team has a different composition than many of our industry peers. They include former Directors, former CTOs, software architects, and entrepreneurs. The other common thread is a solid educational background with technical degrees, and broad based work experiences. This is the most visible team to our executive management group as they control all of our consumer experiences-our number one priority at Google."

Google Product Manager Interview Questions

The followings are questions that I was asked about during a phone interview for the above Google product manager position:

1. Tell me about your background and yourself.
2. You have an online shopping site selling shoes, how would you measure it and how to make it better?
3. You want to develop an application for interviewers to find talents/applicants and for applicants to find jobs. You're given 3 months, 2 engineers. How would you go about a minimum viable product?
4. You have 10 databases each with about 1 million names and you want to consolidate them into one. How would you do it?
5. If you were a piece of furniture, what would you like to be and why?

Comparison

Product Manager vs. Business Analyst

• A product manager analyzes markets, whereas a business analyst analyzes an enterprise. 
• A product manager needs to have wider business view in mind, whereas a BA tends to focus on defined chunks of work.

Product Manager vs. Product Owner

As company gets bigger, the product role may split. Product Manager is more externally focused and works on long-term vision while Product Owner is to support the engineering team  for software development details.

References

• So, What Exactly is Software Product Management? by Saeed Khan​
• Product management needs full-triangle builders
• The Product Manager vs. Product Owner