Product Management: Are you ready to thrive?
One of the most appealing roles within the engineering teams is Product Manager these days, being at the kernel and having superfluous influence over the decisions to shape the product. And, as expected the role has now begun to show up on the lists of most promising careers as well.
Why: Is PM as a role right for you?
If you planned to get into Product Management, and have been hearing the words like its thankless, stressful, nerve-racking, maddening, etc. then its correct, but before you drop an idea let me tell you when it works, you will feel like you were born to do it, so you will have to do an honest analysis and then plan the next !
And, if you realize that you can:
- Solve problems for your team and users.
- Help driving business growth.
- Support a variety of people (business, engineering, etc.)
- Good at developing a strategy.
- Be a leader and get Shit Done!
- Communicate widely & regularly.
- Decision Making
- Create awesome experiences for users.
And fulfilling the above you will surely have to be more organized, that will help you to be more detail oriented and you will always be prepared.
But please don’t plan to be into product management, if you are looking for appreciations always, are afraid of being left alone, are not an individual contributor, and want that everyone likes you, you want to avoid meetings and e-mails, you want to build things for yourself, you are not a servant leader and want to avoid people.
How: If it is something that you want to do, then?
- Look for the opportunities at your company — this should be easy and quick but you surely will have to showcase the product management skillset, here are some more details on the how part of the story.
- Get trained a find a role in another company — if your company doesn’t have the role or is not ready to have a product vision, then there are multiple programs like Product Management Course and Learn Product Management, that can help you to get trained.
- Join some startup who can offer you a role or develop your own product.
There are not many people who are ready to make the career transition but just to give you some relief that there are stories of people from all backgrounds who have made the transition from engineering, user experience, research, sales, marketing, program management, etc.
What: If you have the skills to be the one?
The product manager is different for all the companies and teams but definitely, there are some common skills that are crucial and much needed, they are:
- The strategy to drive business value, you with your team will be getting problems to be solved, and to have a strategy you would need to be more focussed and detail oriented, this shall help you to solve a problem with a solution.
- Building a roadmap and getting shit done, your team should be aligned to the plan, ready to set and hit the deadlines, removing all the blockers, this a very critical and important skill.
- The developers will code, UI/ UX will create experiences and the PM will have to communicate, it is the key.
- Product Manager will have to take the responsibility and have a winning culture in the team, build trust, make decisions, be a servant leader and help the team to produce results that support the business growth.
- If you are the one who is deciding for them or on behalf of the team, you would have to rely on facts before you can get to a particular decision, and your decision would have to be more informed by data.
Now,
Most of the interesting things in life often are uncertain, so if we have to summarize then you will keep an eye on what’s next, keep updating your skillset, share your learnings with your fellow PM’s or team, get feedback and then work on the improvement areas.
Keep sharing your stories & experiences!
Thank you.
