The main responsibility of product Manager: the duty which the product should undertake

Article Description: the main responsibility of the product manager.

As a new product manager, or even a senior PM, you may have some sort of confusion about the position. What exactly is a product manager? What is the main responsibility of this position? In different areas of the IT industry, and even in different companies in the same field, the definition of this position seems to be different.

This article tries to give the product manager's main responsibility according to the experience of the product manager for many years. Although the roles and responsibilities of product managers vary among different companies, there are a number of key responsibilities that any product manager should bear. It can be summed up in the following six areas:

1. Market Research

Market research refers to the study of the market to understand customer needs, competitive conditions and market forces (market forces), the ultimate goal is to find innovative or improve the potential opportunities for products.

Market research can be done in the following ways:

Communicate with users and potential users

Communicate with frontline colleagues directly facing customers such as sales, customer service, technical support, etc.

Research market analysis reports and articles

Try competitive Products

Carefully observe user behavior, etc.

Market research ultimately creates business opportunities, product strategies, or business needs documents (BRD), detailing how to take advantage of potential opportunities.

2, product definition and design

A product definition refers to the determination of what the product needs to do. Typically, a product requirements document (PRD) is used to describe, and PRD may contain the following information:

The vision of the product

Target market

Competitive Analysis

Detailed description of product features

Priority of Product Features

Product use case (UseCase)

System Requirements

Performance requirements

Sales and support requirements, etc.

b The product design is defined as the appearance of the product, including user interface design (ui,user Interface) and user interaction Design (username interaction), which contains all the user experience sections. In a large company, PM usually works with a UI designer or interactive designer to complete a product design, but in a small or start-up company, the product manager may need to work on the whole package.

This is the most valuable part of the product manager's job, and if the product manager does not include this part of the work, it is almost certain that it is not the product manager's job.

3. Project Management

Project management is to lead people from different teams (including engineers, QA, UI designers, marketing, sales, customer service, etc.) to develop and release products on time and within budget. This may include the following work:

Ensure resources are invested

Develop a project plan

Track project progress according to plan

Identify critical paths

Seek additional input if necessary

Report project progress status to Supervisor

In large companies, there is usually a project manager to handle most project management work, and the Product manager simply provides support. But in startups, product managers often need to manage their own projects. In some companies, technical leaders may also be the project manager, dealing with most project management issues.

4. Product Publicity and Referral

Mainly include and internal colleagues such as boss, sales, marketing, customer service and other communication products of the advantages, functions and target market, may also include to the outside world such as media, industry analysts and users to promote products.

Product managers in large companies usually have product marketing, marketing and media relations (PR) teams to help with external product advocacy.

This is the second most valuable job for product managers in addition to product definition and design, especially when Xuanjie products to bosses, market colleagues, and excitement.

5. Product Market

Mainly external information dissemination-tell the outside world about the product information. Usually includes the production of product data sheets, manuals, web sites, flash demonstrations, media topics and exhibition presentations.

In large companies, product marketing is not usually the responsibility of PM, these companies will have a dedicated product marketing manager to take care of the work. Of course, the biggest drawback of this division of labor is that it leads to low communication efficiency and weakens external communication.

In some companies, "product management" and "product markets" are considered synonyms, and one person assumes responsibility for both. In those companies that separate the product management team from the product marketing team, the latter will take care of the job responsibilities mentioned in this section, while they may also be part of the "market research", "product advocacy" and "Product lifecycle" management.

6, Product life cycle management

Refers to those product management activities that are-> released-> mature-> the entire lifecycle as the product experiences conceptualization.

The main tasks included are:

Product positioning

Product Pricing and Promotions

Product line Management

Competitive strategy

Establish or acquire a partner

Identify and establish cooperative relationships, etc.

The Product Manager works with product marketing, BD, and marketing communication colleagues.

I hope this article will help you to understand the Product manager (including Product marketing manager), as well as their close cooperation in the company's Department, and wish you to grow into a good product manager.