People usually have the question "What is product management" in their minds. The question often also arrives even from the expert business personnel. It may be because product management term encompasses a variety of responsibilities. Even the role of a product manager is also different for different organizations.

So, here we have tried to bring the most concise detail about what is product management for you. Learning these details will certainly help you have a better idea about what is product management.

So, here we go:

An introduction to what is product management.

When it's to what is product management, you must know that the daily tasks of product management encompass a variety of tactical and strategic practices. Mostly, product managers don’t take all the responsibilities solely. Some of these responsibilities are done by their teams in the organization.

In common, product management is an intersection of business, user experience, and technology.

·   Technology helps in product management to know the product you want to build. Product managers have a reasonable idea about the technologies involved and the work required to put into product making. Consequently, they can make the right decision in product development strategies.

·   The key objective of product management is boosting business. Therefore, product managers should optimize the product for their customers to impact sales directly. Their practices must improve business ROI.

·   Building improved customers is only possible by hearing customers’ feedback. In such a scenario, product managers should work as their customers’ voice inside the business. They should communicate with customers, get feedback, and then improve products accordingly.

Companies need product management to get exclusive help throughout the product development lifecycle. Product management helps from idea generation and idea testing to product design, product development, pricing, understanding customer feedback, and more.

The strategic function of product management

The answer to “what is product management” is it’s a strategic function in which product managers are tasked to determine the overall reason for product development. Besides that, they also need to communicate the objectives and plans of the product to the rest of the organization.

Product management encompasses multiple ongoing strategic responsibilities. However, in some organizations, product management isn't responsible for the development process’ ground-level details.

However, innovative organizations usually assign their project managers tactical aspects of project management. Such tasks typically include scheduling and managing workloads. At the same time, this distinct division can take the burden of higher-level strategy off its shoulders.

How successful product management practices can help businesses?

Effective product management practices can help businesses in multiple ways. These practices are vital to determine the success or failure of the business overall. Some of the business aspects that product management can impact include:

Alignment with market requirements

It isn't hard for a successful business to continue down a surplus map. When an organization loses its plot. Having a high-quality product management team can help ensure that the organization's strategy is based on market realities. The wishful thinking of the organization should not guide it.

Resource allocation

Most organizations have limited resources, but resource deployment opportunities are unlimited. However, product management is helpful here in determining and practicing an optimal resource allocation strategy. Product management can help the company to receive most of its spent resources.

Product delivery

Good product management is necessary to help businesses to ensure adequate resource allocation and market strategies. These practices will further help companies to develop and deliver optimized products to their customers. An appropriate product delivery process usually includes different aspects, such as:

·   Creating product specs

·   Guiding marketing and engineering teams

·   Coordinating with product distribution channels.

Sales enablement strategy

Helping the sales team to develop a successful product sales strategy is important to reach optimal sales levels. Product managers must ensure that their sales team has detailed knowledge about the product. The tools, content, and sales form should be aligned with the product. Providing content about the product, including how-to guides, videos, blogs, infographics, etc., can help spread the product and its use awareness. The information will ultimately help the sales team to reach more prospects and engage with more qualified leads to close sales better.

Importance of product management

Active management is necessary for the entire product lifecycle, from inspection to disposal. Product developers are technical experts with little client exposure. However, product management bridges the gap between technical product development teams and prospects.

Product management is important for businesses due to multiple reasons. It helps businesses understand customer requirements to create a product roadmap. Here we have enlisted some important reasons why product management is necessary.

Having a look at these details will certainly help you better in this regard.

So, here we go:

Helps the team to stay focused on customer needs

Developing a healthy relationship is a vital aspect of every business. Organizations need to stay focused on their customers' pain points and solve them as much as possible. Product managers can play a vital role in making it happen.

Keeping up with market trends becomes easier.

We all understand the fact that the needs and demands of customers change quickly. However, product management requires the team to communicate with their existing customers and analyze their feedback regularly. The practice will help the organization to keep up with the current market trends and change customer needs in the best possible way.

Prevented effort loss

Creating and maintaining a product roadmap is one necessary aspect of product management. The process also includes updating for further execution of the product roadmap. The constant check-in in the process helps organizations avoid wasting product development efforts. It also prevents organizations from using their resources and efforts to solve the problems that their customers don’t face.

Key steps involved in a product management process

Generally, product management process is based on multiple steps from defining a problem to optimizing end product. The exact steps involved in a product management process depends upon the specific needs and requirements of an organization.

However, here are some key steps involved in an efficient product management process:

So, here we go:

1. Defining a problem

The product development and management process start from identifying high-value pain-point of customers. Identifying a problem and evaluating its scope then help the organizations to determine whether they can make it.

Product management can write the abstract complaints, wishes, and wants of their customers as problem statement. Solving customers problem and easing their pain points are the keys behind development of a product. Without a properly articulated goal impacting the pain points directly, giving product much traction becomes harder.

2. Evaluating the opportunity

There exist numerous pain points, but not all of them are worth solving. At this step, product management team swap their hats from customer-centric approach to business-centric. Product management team should answer different questions to build a business case and qualify the opportunity.

Once product management team evaluated the potential market, then they can determine if it is a significant opportunity.

3. Researching any possible solutions to the problem

At this step, product management team will properly investigate possible ways to solve their customers problems. Casting possible solutions’ large net without ruling out something very quickly is necessary here. They will identify and research any possible solutions that their organization can offer to their customers. Skipping identifying the right solution and jumping directly to building a product can cause severe delays to product development. In addition, there will be no guarantee that the product is suitable for all the customers or not.

4. Building out a product idea

After collecting ideas from different sources, it’s time to be focused on the most suitable solution that the organization should pursue. The company and product management team can either stick to a single solution or combine different aspects from different offered solutions here. The final call can be made based on what’s most suitable option for customers and organization alike.

5. Creating a road map for product development

Now it’s time for the product manager to create a road map to define how they will achieve the milestone step-by-step. The product roadmap must include all the goals, metrics, features, and dates that they need to follow to keep their product development practices on track.

A product manager must add the followings into their product roadmap:

·   Specific time and date to reach a milestone

·   Task explanation and how different pros will accomplish these tasks.

·   Who is responsible for what.

·   Insights to measure success

6. Executing plan

The next step can be product plan execution. With developed roadmap, decided features, and all other details in hand, this is the right time for the product manager to begin delivering directives.

7. Analyze and optimize

The product management process doesn’t end with plan execution. In fact, product managers also need to assess their product’s success to identify if there is any need or room of improvement. Product managers will take feedback from their customers and then identify where they need to make improvements to better help their customers.

Final Thoughts

That’s all for what is product management. In conclusion, product management now has become an important aspect of almost every organization. Product managers are pros who help from ideas creation to product improvement and optimization. The key responsibilities of product management may vary from organization to organization.

In some organizations, the product management team may also be responsible for some additional tasks. However, those mentioned above are some of the important aspects of product management that virtually all product managers need to perform.

‍