Navigating product management: Essential skills, responsibilities, and tools
Last updated: April 2024
Product management is a compelling discipline — particularly for those with an entrepreneurial spirit. It offers autonomy, the chance to work across diverse teams, and an opportunity to make a meaningful impact on business growth.
As a concept, product management encompasses the strategic planning and implementation that goes into delivering a lovable product. Those who work in product management aim to build solutions that solve real customer problems. PMs in software specifically continue to release new functionality and improve their products and services in hopes of achieving long-term, sustainable success.
Product management work is dynamic and rewarding — it continues to grow in popularity. From 2023-2024, for example, just over 16% of MBA students at MIT's Sloan School of Management accepted jobs in product management — making this the third-largest job category for its graduates. Hiring site Glassdoor also ranked product management as the 10th best job in the United States in 2022.
Product managers really, really love Aha! software. Start a free trial.
But what does product management look like in action? And how can you prepare for a career in the field? We will explore these answers (and raise some more questions) in this guide. Use the following links to jump ahead to a specific section:
What is product management?
Product management is the process of bringing products and services to market that customers need. Its core function is to align the organization around what must be completed to ensure a successful delivery — growing the business as a result.
This work is integral to a company's broader product development cycle: the entire process of transforming a raw idea into a solution that addresses customer needs, and then measuring its lovability in the market.
These are the stages of product development identified by Aha! experts. Our software suite covers every stage — so you can take a concept through to launch and beyond.
At each stage in the product development cycle pictured above, product management serves as the guiding hand. It centers leadership, engineering, and other cross-functional groups around a common vision and strategic direction for the work ahead. This requires a laser focus on business goals and a deep understanding of customers to make sure every decision leads to greater product value.
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Where did product management get its start?
Product management is pretty well known today — particularly in the tech industry. But if you go back even just a few years, the function was less understood. (We spent a lot of time in the early days of Aha! writing what we call Versus posts comparing product management to other disciplines.) But even before product managers had a PM title, there were "product people" (brand managers, executives, and engineering leads) driving product growth and innovation:
Early 1900s: The concept of product management emerged as companies started producing goods at a larger, more ambitious scale thanks to technological advancements such as the assembly line. However, PM work was not formally introduced until 1931, when Procter & Gamble employee Neil H. McElroy drafted a memo to executive leadership. Although he was simply trying to justify hiring more people, his work impacted how we think about brand and product management.
1950s-1960s: During the post-World War II economic boom, businesses started focusing on marketing and selling their products to a more extensive consumer base. Product management evolved to include market research, product development, and strategic planning to meet customer demand.
1970s-1980s: The rise in technology and globalization motivated companies to adopt more structured product development approaches. This included introducing project management as a standalone function and closer collaboration with cross-functional teams such as engineering, sales, and marketing.
1990s and beyond: Then, the internet changed everything. It revolutionized product development, marketing, and sales. Product management expanded to include digital products and services, emphasizing user experience (UX) and continuous improvement.
Fast-forward to the present day, and product management now extends beyond product development and marketing to include the overall strategic direction of a company's portfolio. To thrive, products cannot be good (or even great). They must be lovable and fit into the bigger picture of what your company wants to achieve.
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Why is product management important?
If you are reading this, we bet you already know how important product management is to a business. But to folks outside of the field, how do you describe its essential nature?
Here is a good way to articulate it: Product management enables teams to build products that meet real customer needs.
Product management drives business success in a few significant ways:
Ensures products are aligned with market needs, boosting sales and success
Grows revenue and profitability through strategic pricing and feature optimization
Strengthens the company's competitive position by continuously innovating and improving the offering
Enhances the customer experience and fosters product advocacy
Balances competing priorities, focusing on initiatives that will have the greatest impact on business goals
Companies achieve sustainable success based on the strength of their offering. And although product management does a lot of the heavy lifting, product building is a cross-functional endeavor. Product management acts as a bridge between engineering, design, marketing, sales, and customer support. People who work in product management facilitate communication among these teams, making sure everyone is working toward the same product goals.
From understanding customer needs and setting strategy to maximizing product value and market success, product management is the driving force behind it all.
Product management vs. project management
Product management and project management — two sides of the same coin? The short answer: It depends. The work that product managers and project managers do is usually quite distinct. But there is overlap, especially within small and midsize companies.
Here's how we would break down the two:
Product management is primarily concerned with defining the "why" and "what" of a product. PMs set the strategy, build the product roadmap, and prioritize what to build. It is an ongoing effort — you are managing the entire lifecycle of the product from launch through its subsequent releases, iterations, and so forth.
Project management focuses more on the "how," "when," and "who." Project managers oversee implementation or a series of activities within a certain time frame, helping the team deliver on time and on budget.
Product management and project management are complementary disciplines. The table below adds more detail around how both functions work together to ensure successful product delivery.
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Product management responsibilities
Product management oversees product-related activities throughout every stage of the product lifecycle — from planning, development, and launch through to growth, maturity, and decline. This entails crafting the strategy, roadmap, and feature definition for a product or product line. Product management might also include auxiliary tasks like product marketing, financial forecasting, and managing profit and loss.
PM responsibilities include:
Setting a product vision and strategy that is differentiated and delivers unique value based on customer demands: This includes defining personas and analyzing market and competitive conditions. Using a business model template, like the one that is pictured below, can help you capture assumptions about your market, analyze the state of your business, and plan for new opportunities.
Defining what the product team will deliver and the timeline for implementation: This includes creating a release plan, capturing actionable feedback and ideas, and prioritizing features.
Providing cross-functional leadership — most notably across engineering, sales, marketing, and support: A key aspect of this is communicating progress against the product roadmap and keeping everyone informed about updates.
Leading the entire product launch process and all subsequent releases: Competitive research, product development, go-to-market strategy, and customer support readiness all roll up into a successful market entry.
Analyzing product success: This entails tracking product metrics such as customer usage and revenue to determine the success of your offering.
Another way to understand what product management involves is to consider internal (team-facing) vs. external (customer-facing) spheres of work. It is worth noting that product management and product marketing are typically separate roles, but there is frequent communication and close collaboration between them.
Internal product management | External product management | |
Focus | Internal product management involves gathering customer research, competitive intelligence, and industry trends — as well as setting strategy and managing the product roadmap. | External product management includes product marketing responsibilities such as messaging and branding, customer communications, product launches, advertising, PR, and events. |
Tactical examples |
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Essential skills in product management
Achievement in product management demands a diverse set of skills. Product managers strive to be curious, thoughtful, compassionate, and organized. You work hard to align all stakeholders around a strategic vision and maintain a relentless focus on customer needs.
Day to day, this can look like working with UX designers to build wireframes on a digital whiteboard, collaborating with engineering to scope out new features, and meeting regularly with leadership to communicate progress on your roadmap. You need a wide variety of skills to do this successfully. Some of the most important ones include:
Strategic thinking: Product success relies on your ability to think beyond tactical work and deliver a Complete Product Experience to your customers.
Empathy: You need to know how to listen to customers, translating their pain points into real product solutions.
Leadership: The best product managers can keep the entire product team aligned and working toward a common goal.
Communication: Keeping the cross-functional team in sync is essential — this means understanding each team's needs and the most valuable information they will require from you.
Research skills: Understanding your customers and market is critical to product building. Compile research into user stories and competitive analysis to help teams make sense of it all.
Analytical skills: You need to measure progress every step of the way, especially as you iterate on your offering. Use analytical skills to dig into the data and discover the "why" behind the numbers.
Related:
LinkedIn Learning: Aha! Product Management Professional Certificate
Harvard Business Review: What It Takes to Become a Great Product Manager
Product management tools
Historically, product managers used a combination of spreadsheets, presentations, and text-based documents to communicate product strategy and even build a roadmap. This is still common today, but the static nature of these tools requires constant updates and introduces version-control chaos.
Over time, product managers began to experiment with developer tools and project management software. However, these fall short when it comes to communicating roadmap changes and prioritizing work based on strategy.
It became clear to Aha! founders Brian de Haaff and Chris Waters that there was a need for purpose-built product development tools — like roadmapping software. Product teams need a centralized place to set strategy, ideate on whiteboards, capture customer feedback, build beautiful roadmaps, document team knowledge, and more. Aha! software provides all of this functionality in one place, all while supporting teams that want to implement modern methodologies.
