Notes - How to become a Product Manager
Tags: career, productivity, techtalks
Published: 2020-06-27 22:13:16

---
title: Notes - How to become a Product Manager
published: true
description: 
tags: career, productivity, techtalks
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/jwqls97i1w2v8m9gw26d.png
---

Recently I've listened to talks on [GitCommitShow](https://gitcommit.show). One of them was about becoming a product manager by [Gaurav Nemade](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gauravnemade). I really enjoyed his speech. So I made notes for myself according to what he talked about. But I suppose perhaps these notes would also be helpful for someone else.  

The speaker focuses on two points:

1. What exactly is the job of a Product Manager

2. Getting into product management

Let's go over the points.

## What exactly is the job of a Product Manager

Let's imagine that we are developing an application. What the app is gonna be doing is it is just gonna be helping people to play the guitar. 

#### What game should we be playing? (aka define the product strategy)

1. What kind of solution should we build?
   1. A peer-to-peer network of tutors & learners (Uber for guitar learning)
   2. A collection of guitar chords (wikipedia for guitar learning)
   3. A tutor app with coaching functionality (Karoake style app for guitar learning)
2. What is the goal for company & project?
   1. Increase users; ear more revenues; side project out of interest
3. What are the core user needs & segments?
   1. What are user pain points and needs?
   2. Should we target the amateur players of advanced guitar players?
4. How is the overall industry & trend?
   1. What's the value proposition of Ultimate Guitar, Yousician & others.
   2. What new technologies are that can help improve guitar learning.

#### Prioritization of Efforts

What game are we playing -> Build a guitar tutoring app for newbies with a goal of building user base.

Next we are listing the whole bunch of features we want to build.

**Features to build**

- Library of chords
- Lessons with progressive difficulty
- Record what user is playing
- Pick mistakes by using a ML model
- 25 others...

What we need to do next is just to decide which features we want to see first and choose them; which features we can develop later; and perhaps some feature not actual anymore during the work. So I understand it as a kind of prioritizing.

**Features to build**

- Library of chords **[Phase-1]**
- Lessons with progressive difficulty **[Phase-1]**
- Record what user is playing **[Dropped]**
- Pick mistakes by using a ML model **[Phase-2]**
- 25 others...

**Balancing act**

- User requests
- Business needs
- Best for the product (short-term vs long-term)

A good phrase is: *"If Everything Is a Focus, Nothing Is A focus"*

Product manager's responsibility is to define what is in a focus.

#### Execution

At the end of the day, Product Manager ships products and they do whatever else it takes.

**A. Clear specifications on what to build and why**

**B. Analyze user data**

If there is no data analyzer then it is PM's responsibility.

- Which lessons are being played the most? Add them as features lessons?

**C. Quality Analyst of the product**

- Learn to play guitar and test the product everyday.

**D. Interface with (or fill in for) x-functional needs**

- Running marketing campaign, working with lawyers to build privacy policies, working with UX, partnerships team and more.

## Getting into product management

The question is *"Should I be a Product Manager?"*

*"It depends!"*, the speaker says.

#### The positives and the challenges of being a PM

**Positives**

- **Solving a real-world problem**
  - Front and center of identifying problems to solve
- **Breadth vs depth**
  - Broad exposure to industry, competitive products, x-functional teams (Design, Sales, Marketing, Legal, etc.)
- **Leadership training**
  - "What" & "Why" in development cycle (vs SWEs primary focus on "How")
  - People skills

**Challenges**

- **Lack of tangible skills**
  - PMs rely a lot on intagible skills
- **Leading w/o authority**
  - PMs almost never have direct  authority over SWE team and have to work with influence.
- **Busy than most other roles**
  - Have to work with different areas
  - Meeting are a way of life no (or very less) coding
- "If it succeeds, it's because of the team. If it fails, it's because of you (the PM)"

#### Prepping to be a PM

- **Product & strategic Insights:** Build your product insights & strategic insights by studying loads of case studies and being curios about products around you
- **Communication skills:** Develop negotiation (& preferrably) public speaking skills.
- **Understand different types of PM roles:** B2C vs B2B, Hardware vs Software, Front end vs backend technology PM, etc.
- **Prepare well for interviews:** different companies have different interview process (common themes are product & strategic insights, analytical, creativity, communication as main criteria).

Strategy: THINK LIKE A PM - "What would I do if I were the PM of the product?" (So PM thinks this way for every product they see)

All these wonderful things I caught in  [Gaurav's](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gauravnemade) talk.

**Cheers!**