What is Product Management?
Hi reader! today in this blog we will explore the very first and basic question of — What is Product Management?
below are some Googled definitions of product management:
Product management is an organisational function within a company dealing with new product development, business justification, planning, verification, forecasting, pricing, product launch, and marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle
Product management is the role and function within an organization that is responsible for a product’s overall success. Product Managers work with groups inside and outside of the company to build and execute a plan to make sure the product best meets its financial and strategic goals
Product management is an organizational function that guides every step of a product’s lifecycle: from development, to positioning and pricing, by focusing on the product and its customers first and foremost. To build the best possible product, product managers advocate for customers within the organization and make sure the voice of the market is heard and heeded
but if you want to understand Product Management in a simple way, then Let’s decode these first:
First, what is a Product?
a product solves certain problem(s) for a particular group of people (called users). These people would also be agreeing to pay a certain amount of money for purchasing this product/service. Now, this product could be anything, a physical object like a door, bulb, chair, phone or it could be a digital entity like a website, app, enterprise software
But, wait for a second, I don’t pay for a lot of products that I use on almost an everyday basis — like Gmail or Google Maps. Then are they not considered products?
Well, of course, they are! There are products that make revenue through other existing users of the product (B2B side of the product — vendors/advertisers, etc), or they intend to charge the user at a later stage when the product is considered valuable enough by the user, or the current product is a front for generating users for another product or feature that would be paid
What do we mean by Product Management then?
Product Management would imply managing the three main components that influence any product and its lifecycle — its users, stakeholders, and environment
User Centric Product — Products should be built around their users, their needs, and their pain points. Since your users would be paying you for using your product, so unless it solves their real pain points for which they would pay you money your product won’t generate revenue
Stakeholders are equally important since they influence the company and product goals and influence product features' prioritization and release. Stakeholders are your company leaders, department heads, management team, investors
Environment includes all the external factors that can influence/affect the product. This would include competitors, industry economics, related industries, and competitors. New products or new features launched by competitors can affect your product usage and revenue
As a Product Manager, you have to be greatly aware of all these three components that will affect your product and you have to constantly work with them to keep the product relevant in the market and also to take it up on a growth path
