The ability to analyze and understand the metrics that you are looking at is essential to growth hacking improvements as a product manager.”Īrmed with emotional and analytic insights, good product managers shouldn’t be afraid to lead their teams to quick results. The background that I have in mathematics has helped me tremendously in truly being able to understand my customers’ journeys and points in which they need improvements. Casey McGuigan, product manager at software maker Infragistics, says that in particular, “Data should always be top of mind and at the center of all decisions. Data and analytical savvyīut a great product manager needs hard skills as well as soft ones. It puts you in the right mindset and somehow makes it obvious what needs more polish.” 3. “A great way to get there is picturing yourself explaining to a good friend or family member how to use that feature. “A great product manager feels the urge to make things simpler and easier for their users,” explains Vincent Paquet, CPO of Dialpad, which makes AI-powered communications software for contact centers and other businesses. “Whether you call that EQ or something less buzzy, it’s the soft skills that make great product managers.”Īnd empathy too isn’t necessarily an inborn quality - it’s a skill that you can develop if you want to find success in this field. “You also need to understand, balance, and mold the perspectives from multiple functional areas - dev, stakeholders, design, etc. Shane Quinlan, director of product management at software development firm Kion, says that empathy with potential customers is just one part of the picture. “Too many products fail, despite being technically brilliant or aesthetically beautiful, because they serve no unmet need and therefore find no customer adoption.” “Empathy is essential because product managers need to always keep in mind the raison d’être of their products - who will use them, and why will customers change habits to adopt a new product?” says Microshare’s Paumelle. But in fact, almost all the experts we spoke to cited it as a key quality an elite product manager should have. You may not be used to hearing someone say that an ability to empathize is a business skill. “Given that this role can emerge from various backgrounds, including customer success, sales, marketing, or development, a real opportunity presents itself because effective communicators can empathize with the users and translate priorities back to the business,” she says. That means you need to be a great communicator, says Dan Ciruli, VP of product management at software services provider D2iQ.Ĭommunication skills are so in demand that good communicators from a wide variety of backgrounds can use them to enter this field, says Cait Porte, who is chief marketing officer at software development company Digibee and has a background in product management. Much of a product manager’s job involves ensuring the various functions of a cross-functional team work well together. They talked about what you need to succeed, how you can upskill yourself if you’re interested in this career path, and how the skills you already have may give you a leg up. ![]() We spoke to a wide variety of professionals, including current and former project managers and those who hire and mentor them, about what skills and traits they see as marking out the best of the best in this role. ![]() As business organizational cultures shift to emphasize product managers, IT leaders have to know more about what makes a good one - and others filling a variety of roles, including those in tech-centered jobs, might be curious about what it takes to make the leap into product management. This organizational shift has given new importance to the product manager, who serves as the leader for such a team and acts as the point person throughout the product’s lifecycle.Ī product manager must blend soft and hard skills, and balance input, concerns, and feedback from multiple departments, key stakeholders, business leaders, customers, and clients. IT organizations are shifting to product-based methodologies, in which cross-functional teams made up of both tech and business pros focus on a single product or service offering. The days when IT was left to its own (literal) devices, content to work on the tech side of various projects, are on their way out.
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