To succinctly answer how I see the job of a product manager, I believe Product Management in Practice phrases it perfectly in saying that a PM is “the person who is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of [the] product.” However, this can take on many different shapes and forms, not only dependent on the company, but also dependent on the team or product, itself. The reading emphasizes that the overarching theme or set of responsibilities that tie all product managers together is not the specific tasks that they are responsible for, but rather, the outcome that they are responsible for: the success of the product. In other words, the consistent theme amongst the jobs of product managers is that they are “responsible for doing whatever needs to get done to ensure the success of [their] team and [their] product.”
In addition to the traits that make a great product manager which Product Management in Practice listed, (“people who like to solve interesting problems, learn new problems, and work with smart people”), I would add that a trait I’ve seen amongst great product managers is being able to see the big picture of any project, and having the intuition of how to break down the bigger picture into smaller tasks to best accomplish it. While other disciplines within the team (engineers, data scientists, graphic designers, etc.) will have the skills to perfectly solve the broken down, smaller tasks, the PM must have the vision of the exact smaller tasks needed and the general big picture mindset to work towards the best product/solution possible.
In terms of questions for the author, I would love to hear the answer to “How do I know if PM is the right career path for me, versus SWE or another role in tech?”
