{"id":75,"date":"2017-02-26T22:16:44","date_gmt":"2017-02-26T22:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itnigblog.live-website.com\/demystifying-the-product-manager-and-how-to-become-one"},"modified":"2020-06-11T13:11:36","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T13:11:36","slug":"demystifying-the-product-manager-and-how-to-become-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itnig.net\/blog\/demystifying-the-product-manager-and-how-to-become-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Demystifying the product manager, and how to become one"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"What does a product manager do and how to become one - interview\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IIxqVVuX0yw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As product focus is more important than ever in building startups in a very competitive market, the product manager role is increasingly getting more common and is highly valued.<\/p>\n<p>But to many it\u2019s a job description that\u2019s a bit vague, and often means different things from company to company.<\/p>\n<p>We invited three product people from the startup ecosystem in Barcelona to discuss the topic: Former PM at Google and currently product consultant <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/u\/7664b1d60b5f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Itamar Gilad<\/a>, CEO and co-founder of <a href=\"http:\/\/factorialhr.com\/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Factorial<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/u\/92ac139a8c33\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jordi Romero<\/a>, and CEO and co-founder of <a href=\"http:\/\/getquipu.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Quipu<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/u\/3fc036a70bc7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Roger Doba\u00f1o<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Long time product expert Gilad says it\u2019s hard to explain the PM role in one sentence:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The position has changed so much over time, and it\u2019s still changing. I like to define the PM as the person who\u2019s the expert on the users, the customers, the market and the competition, and manages to deliver this context to the product team in a good way\u200a\u2014\u200ait\u2019s a super man basically!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3>From product to customer\u00a0first<\/h3>\n<figure class=\"wp-caption\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From the left: Sindre Hopland, media manager at itnig, Jordi Romero, CEO and co- founder of Factorial.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The last 10\u201320 years, tech companies have shifted their focus from trusting their engineers more than market, to lifting the customer and the users as the number one priority in making the product, says Gilad that for the last six years has managed products such as Gmail and Youtube:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The first time I heard the term product manager was back in the 90\u2019s, and back then it was very new. The thought was that engineers always knew best, but that has changed a lot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Also Romero, CEO of Factorial, recognizes the attitude from earlier times when he worked in other SaaS companies in the US and in Barcelona:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I remember we first defined ourselves as a product-first company, then a sales-driven startup and later a customer focused company. It think these terms are hard for startups that alter and change the way they do business often.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Doba\u00f1o is both CEO and head of product at accounting SaaS Quipu, he defined the product role like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>You\u2019re the CEO of the product, but it\u2019s not just about making a great product, it\u2019s about continuously solving problems for the customers and making an impact in your customers life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3>All the responsibility, but no authority<\/h3>\n<figure class=\"wp-caption\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The product manager is found somewhere between tech, business and the UX\/UI team of the startup. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mindtheproduct.com\/2011\/10\/what-exactly-is-a-product-manager\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u00a9 2011 Martin Eriksson.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Even though the PM has the word manager in the title, all three guests agrees that the only thing the PM actually manage is the product itself.<\/p>\n<p>Romero points to several challenges connected with this kind of responsibility:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>An issue I\u2019ve seen in many product teams, is that the PM is managing the team itself, and not only the product and process. I think this is a real problem that is hindering the communication in the organization.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Itamar explains that the PM is there to fill all the holes of work that aren\u2019t being worked on, which means that the person needs to be diverse:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The PM is working closely with both customer service, the business side, designers and engineering, it\u2019s more about creating a pattern for collaborations and a good flow of progress. It\u2019s needless to say that soft skills are in high demand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He continues to say that a startup needs a designated PM when the startup is at a scale where the business people and the engineering team start arguing what to build next, and you don\u2019t have time as a CEO to deal with all the discussions.<\/p>\n<h3>How to become\u00a0one<\/h3>\n<figure class=\"wp-caption\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" data-width=\"2252\" data-height=\"1228\" src=\"https:\/\/itnig.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/258fd-1asrhxm7tbxcdleuhexwhbg.png\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From the left: Itamar Gilad and Roger\u00a0Doba\u00f1o.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Romero says he believes a lot in promoting PM\u2019s within the company that share the original values and vision of the founders.<\/p>\n<p>Itamar explains that it\u2019s not necessary to know how to code, but many big companies require it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google they alway prefer someone with a coding background. However, the personal also needs to be interested in the business side of the startup and have strong soft skills for team management.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Doba\u00f1o thinks many companies are setting too high requirements for their PM\u2019s:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What you\u2019re describing here is a unicorn. I do agree that PM\u2019s should have a computer science background, but my job is to empower one person within each product team, and I\u2019ll then make sure the communication flow is good between the company.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Romero repeats how vital soft skills are to this profession:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>To have all the technical skills is one thing, but to be able to both do a sales pitch and to convince the developer team that what they\u2019re building is the right thing to focus on, that\u2019s tricky.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<hr \/>\n<p>This post was written by <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/u\/edb2f3e669ff\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sindre Hopland<\/a>, media manager at itnig and produced together with <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/u\/4a71dd742203\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Masumi Mutsuda<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/upscri.be\/285782-2\">https:\/\/upscri.be\/285782-2<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As product focus is more important than ever in building startups in a very competitive market, the product manager role is increasingly getting more common and is highly valued. But to many it\u2019s a job description that\u2019s a bit vague, and often means different things from company to company. We invited three product people from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,278,279,280,312],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-startups","tag-how-to","tag-product","tag-product-design","tag-product-management","tag-startup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itnig.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itnig.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itnig.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itnig.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itnig.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/itnig.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9164,"href":"https:\/\/itnig.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/9164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itnig.net\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itnig.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itnig.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itnig.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}