A Value Guide To Breaking
Into Product Management
WHAT IS PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT?
Product management is a field that has been gaining significant traction
in recent years. Businesses all over the world are becoming much more
aware of the importance of proper asset management in fostering
innovation and overall corporate growth. This is not merely a career path
at big tech firms; it also plays a significant role in conventional enterprises
that opt to adopt the technology. There may be a great deal of confusion
about what product management is because it is a relatively new
profession in its current incarnation. So, Where do product management
roles end and other roles begin? Who can become a Product Manager? Let’s
start with the ultimate question - what exactly is Product Management?
What is Product Management?
Product management is a core function that directs each stage of a product's
lifetime, from development to pricing, by focusing on the product and its
customers first. Product managers represent consumers' interests within the
company and ensure that the market's voice is heard in order to create the
greatest product possible.
Product management is a cross-functional role that requires
cross-functional interactions with organizational stakeholders including
C-level executives, development, design, marketing, and sales
departments. Martin Eriksson, a product management leader stated
Product Management as the intersection of business, user experience, and
technology.
THE MANY HATS OF
PRODUCT MANAGER!
The lack of clarity on what a product manager is due to the role's novelty.
Whereas practitioners of more established crafts, such as design and
engineering, have been allowed to specialize, product managers are still
defining the role.
The responsibilities of a Product Manager mostly depend on the size of the
organization. For instance, in larger organizations, they are implanted
within the team of specialists like researchers, marketers, analysts, etc. that
help them with aligning the stakeholders behind a specific vision. On the
flip-side, in smaller organizations, Product Managers do more hands-on
work to define a vision & making it happen
HERE ARE THE FEW HATS THAT PRODUCT
MANAGERS WEAR TO REACH THEIR GOALS:
Psychologist: It is not enough to know the customer. They also care about
them deeply & empathize with them to understand their needs.
Journalist: PMs are great storytellers & they hone basic investigation skills
to interview their customers & conduct user-market research.
Architect: PMs have an understanding of design & logic to plan elegant
solutions.
Freelancer: They are a self-starter & communicate effectively with the
relevant teams like marketing, development, etc. to execute the plan,
Director: They oversee the product development & delivery and also
prioritize ideas, features, and other elements of the product lifecycle.
Diplomat: One of the important tasks for PMs is to influence stakeholders
with their product vision.
WHY PRODUCT MANAGEMENT IS
NOT A PROJECT MANAGEMENT?
The common oversight in the world of Product Management is that many
dump both product management and project management into one
role. But one thing everyone knows about a job is it changes with technology!
Product Management belongs to the modern era. It is something better
suited to the difficulties of digital products, yet drawing on the logical and
effective strategies created by project managers.
Project Management Product Management
It entails applying processes, It deals with the planning,
techniques, knowledge, abilities, forecasting, and production or
and expertise to complete a marketing of a product or
certain project's goals. products at all stages of the
product life cycle.
Project Managers have a Product Managers have no
specific background & expertise specific backgrounds, and they
in particular disciplines to solve should be prepared to embrace
precise challenges. new technology & multiple
challenges.
Product Managers' ultimate Project Managers’ ultimate goal
goal is to maximize the value & is to maximize the quality of the
revenue stream of the business. product while minimizing the
risk.
Product and Project Management are complimentary yet distinct.
Internally, project management focuses on achieving particular goals
and finishing a certain project on schedule and within budget. However,
product management takes a wider perspective & concentrates on
product vision, customer satisfaction & business goals.
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
PROCESS
A great idea may not necessarily translate into a brilliant product. In the
beginning, not all ideas are that amazing. Keeping these axioms in mind,
product management is essential for bringing chaos under control and
ultimately bringing products to market.
When it comes to the Product Management process, there is no universal
playbook. However, most organizations have a similar order of operations.
We have defined seven main stages that nearly every product goes
through.
THE 7 MAIN STEPS OF THE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
PROCESS
1. Market & User Research: Understanding the existing market & figuring out
the need gap is the most crucial part of Product Management.
Market research should include:
estimating the size of a target market
researching the competitors
assessing competitors' weaknesses
examining the scope for improvement
As per the Salesforce report, 76% of customers expect companies to
understand their needs. Evidently, understanding your customer is a basis for
building a successful product. Learn about users’ needs & desires by
conducting interviews, surveys, focus groups, etc.
2. Idea Management: From brainstorming to customer interviews, there are
multiple ways to tease out an idea(s). However, not every idea is the best
& non-existent. As a Product Manager, you will have to separate the wheat
from the chaff and figure out which one is best for your product &
consumers.
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
PROCESS
Product managers are responsible for keeping a transparent framework for
gathering, merging, and archiving these ideas. It also helps stakeholders
understand that there is more than one idea under consideration for
implementation.
3. Specifications: This is the stage where ideas are translated into product
specifications. The document should answer at least these 3 vital
questions that will be helpful in the further Product Management process
with the help of product teams & stakeholders’ inputs:
What to build, and why?
What goals should this new product achieve?
How to measure success?
This step helps in knowing how big the project will be & help in the product
roadmap by giving a realistic timeline.
4. Strategy Development: While customer development and market
research helped develop the product's vision, strategy describes the
actions you intend to take to steadily attain your product goal.
The best way to plot the product strategy into steps of execution is via
product road mapping. This is where the focus shifts from discussing features
to high-level goals that advance the product vision.
It is always a good idea to have two roadmaps:
An internal roadmap with backlog guides that contains the work of the
development team
The external one is for the users' benefit and informs them of upcoming
features.
Before moving to the next step, prioritize the backlog items & learn how
they will impact on product’s vision, goals, and strategy.
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
PROCESS
5. Product Development & Delivery: Now that there is a plan and a list of
priorities, the creation of the product begins. This step is where Product
Managers take the backstage by serving in more of an advisory role as
engineers & project managers take the reign. The product delivery
depends on the model that the organization follows; the waterfall model
or agile development.
At this stage, a minimum viable product (MVP) has to be created. It involves
creating a simple version of the product with basic features & sending it out on
the market to test its functionality.
Product management's role is to make sure that what is being developed
fulfills the needs and expectations of the market and stakeholders,
regardless of the specific delivery method. They should be able to specify,
elaborate on, and confirm that the work being done will accomplish the
project's planned goals.
6. Product Analytics & Testing: Product Management covers a few
important things at this level of the process:
they can observe which behaviors influence the important KPIs that the firm
values.
can identify the traits of the profitable customer to learn about what to invest in
respective to product functionality & marketing side of the product.
can evaluate the efficacy of various scenarios by testing them on different user
groups.
7. Customer Feedback: Now is the time to collect and solicit feedback from
your consumers. It might be both exciting & terrifying as insights are often
received in the form of complaints & absurd requests but they can help
you realize that the product has fallen short of customer expectations.
60% of product managers claim that their finest ideas came from clients
directly, as per PM insights research. Few of the customer feedback
opportunities include:
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
PROCESS
Surveys
Customer Advisory Boards
Focus Groups
Customer Interviews
Usability Tests
Customer Service & Sales Team Interaction
This is not the endpoint of the Product Management process, from here
starts the goal of sustaining your business with optimization and efficiency.
Product Management is never a linear process, it takes being flexible and
self & team resilient.
The above-described process may be ideal but there will be several
points where you will have to veer from this laid-out path. However, they
are all essential ingredients to bring the product to the market that
satisfies the customer and adheres to your product vision & business goal.
METRICS THAT GREAT PRODUCT
MANAGERS TRACK
A successful product manager should be data-driven to build the right
product & solve problems quickly. In this case, metrics are used to detect
problems, set goals, and make informed decisions by the product manager,
stakeholders, as well as other teams.
Here Are A Few Key Product Metrics You Should Track:
1. User Engagement Metrics:
Daily Active User/Monthly Active User: These metrics provide you with a broad
picture of how your user base is changing over time and how users are using
your product.
How to calculate it: The calculation of these metrics depends on the nature of
the product. The general way is, to sum up, all the unique users within a certain
time period.
Stickiness: It measures how often users engage with the product & indicates
the growth rate of the business.
How to calculate it:
Stickiness Ratio = Daily Active Users (DAU) / Monthly Active Users (MAU)
Time In-App: It measures how long users spent their time on your product.
How to calculate it:
It depends on how your product is used. The general format is to add up all of the
active time users spend on the product each day. This helps in identifying how
the daily time in the product is trending over time.
METRICS THAT GREAT PRODUCT
MANAGERS TRACK
2. Feature Resonance Metrics:
Feature Fit Index(FFI): It is to gauge customers' sentiment towards an existing or
new feature.
How to calculate it:
FFI score = No. of respondents who don’t want the feature to be removed / Total
no. of respondents
3. User Acquisition Metrics:
Retention Rate: It is the percentage of users that continue to be active & can be
used to understand the lifetime value of the customer.
How to calculate it:
Retention Rate = No. of users or customers in period 2 / No. of users of customers
in period 1
Churn Rate: It is basically the inversion of retention rate as it measures the
percentage of users that are not active.
How to calculate it:
Churn Rate = No. of users or customers lost in period 2 / No. of users of customers
in period 1
4. Customer Satisfaction Metrics:
Net Promoter Score(NPS): It is used to understand your users' satisfaction with
the product.
How to calculate it: It depends on promoters & detracters answering standard
NPS questions.
NPS = % of Promoters - % of Detracters
METRICS THAT GREAT PRODUCT
MANAGERS TRACK
2. Other SaaS Metrics
Monthly Recurring Revenue(MRR): It measures the overall value of monthly
revenue.
How to calculate it:
MRR = No. of monthly subscribers * Average revenue per user
Customer Lifetime Value(CLV): It is the overall value of revenue obtained from
a customer in their entire time of product usage.
How to calculate it:
CLV = Customer value * Average customer lifespan
Customer Cost Acquisition(CCA): It is the total cost spent on acquiring a
customer through sales, marketing & onboarding.
How to calculate it:
Customer Acquisition Cost = Marketing cost + sales cost + new customer
support cost
Average Revenue Per Unit(ARPU): It is used to measure the average revenue
associated with each customer within a time period.
How to calculate it:
ARPU = Total annual recurring revenue/total no. of paying customers
CAREERS IN PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
With 40,000+ open jobs on LinkedIn alone, Product Manager roles are
highly in-demand, with high salaries and ample opportunities for growth.
The average income for a product manager in India is almost 246%
greater than the country's average wage (Jobted). Are you ready to get
into this lucrative industry? Let’s take a look at the careers & career paths
to decide for yourself.
CAREER PATH OF A PRODUCT MANAGER
Associate Product Manager
Product Manager
Senior Product Manager
Director of Product
VP of Product
Chief Product Officer
Job titles differ among companies based on their company size, budget &
organizational structure. There can be only a Product Manager who
handles all the responsibilities or just an associate product manager &
senior managers make the team. Even with such differences, it’s helpful to
know about a general career path to plan a career in PM.
CAREERS IN PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
ASSOCIATE PRODUCT MANAGER
As an Associate Product Manager, you will work on a much smaller scale
than a Product Manager does. The first expectation, a company will have
of you is your understanding of their customer & empathy for them. Your
ability to highlight the issues & opportunities gets you on the right track.
Responsibilities:
Prioritizing tasks with a defined set of constraints.
Market & user research
Working with the product team to devise product vision
Interviewing customers & collecting feedback
Analysis of the existing data to understand the user needs
PRODUCT MANAGER
It is a mid-level career. With the title, comes more responsibilities. You will
be the point of contact for other teams & stakeholders. You should
demonstrate your skills by showing the company that you understand
basic product concepts & you can run the show with the right attitude.
Responsibilities:
Working with developers to define features, user stories, and user
acceptance criteria.
Determining customer needs
Create product vision & roadmap
Develop industry-leading features & products that serve
customer needs
Working with product team & cross-functional teams
CAREERS IN PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
SENIOR PRODUCT MANAGER
You can become a senior product manager, once you have 3-5 years of
experience under your belt. This role requires a deep understanding of
the product & the market and should also have the ability to influence
executives & other stakeholders.
Responsibilities:
Managing product team
Leading the product strategy
Developing a long-term strategy for your area of ownership
Executing go-to-market plans for the new features & products
Buiding business cases & selling your vision to the leadership
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT
This role requires you to have a leadership experience. Your focus should
be on building better processes, improving team performance, and
fostering alignment throughout the business. Most companies look for
people with more than 10+ years of experience but small organizations
hire directors with only 5+ years of product management experience.
Responsibilities:
Developing and driving the product roadmap, moving critical abilities
from concept to customer.
Translating product strategy into detailed requirements, user stories,
and prototypes
Working with all relevant stakeholders to identify issues, define goals,
and develop solutions.
Participating in scrum teams as a product owner and collaborating with
developers to deliver a high-quality product on schedule.
Owning the product development process
CAREERS IN PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
VP OF PRODUCT
This role is a high-level support resource for the organization. Your main
responsibility involves aligning the product’s vision to the company’s
goals. To become a VP of Product, you’ll need 10+ years of experience in
product management.
Responsibilities:
Budgeting for the product that is aligned with the organization’s budget
Ensuring that strategic product decisions are in line with corporate goals
Building a cohesive team & developing great product leaders
Collaborate with cross-functional leaders to translate the company
vision into product vision
CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER
Not many organizations have this role, but if your organization does, then
this should be your next career goal. This executive-level role is basically
the expanded version of the VP role. The experience required to attain
this position is 10+ to 15+ depending on the size & structure of the
organization.
Responsibilities:
Supervising & overseeing the entire product organization
Working on data analysis & overseeing the key product metrics
Developing a product vision that reflects the core values of the
company
Presenting the product during exhibitions, conferences, meetings, and
other events
Beyond this point, Product Managers can continue their career journey by
becoming a COO or CEO of a company.
SALARIES OF PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT CAREERS
Associate Product Manager
Avg. Base Salary:
9.7 LPA
Product Manager
Avg. Base Salary:
13.5 LPA
Director of Product
Avg. Base Salary:
30.6 LPA
VP of Product
Avg. Base Salary:
41.8 LPA
Chief Product Officer
Avg. Base Salary:
49 LPA
CAREER TRANSITION TO PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
[Link]
Have you heard the phrase, “all roads lead to Rome?” Well, we got one -
“Many careers lead to product management.” The career path of a PM is
not a linear one. Anyone with curiosity and the right attitude can walk the
road to PM.
Regardless of your current role, there are 2 main ways to get into the PM
space:
Internal transitions within your company
Move to an Associate Product Management role in another company
Both the options have a common point, that is, you should have the
knowledge & skill sets of a Product Manager to enter Product
Management. [Link]
Getting a certification in PM is a great way to fill this gap.
HERE ARE 4 MAIN CAREERS THAT CAN TRANSITION
EASILY INTO PM.
Transferrable Skills
Engineer Marketing
Technical Skills User Research
Lean Thinking Market Research
Growth-Hacking Communication Skills
Consulting Design
Strong Analytical Skills User Research
Prioritization Interaction Design Skills
Stakeholder Management Usability Testing
CAREER TRANSITION TO PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
1. Engineer
Technical Skills: Approaching Product Management with technical skills
& understanding technical concepts of the company’s product can help
you in the long run.
Lean Thinking: Almost every engineer is aware of the concept “Lean” and
this gives them an edge over non-technical candidates. Product
Managers are meant to see the bigger picture by reducing waste, testing,
learning fast, making data-driven decisions, etc. & this is applied to
different aspects of the business.
Growth-Hacking: Though it's a marketing word, it was adapted by
engineers at first. Having knowledge about what people click on, and what
attracts them or repels them can be a great instrument while creating a
product.
2. Marketing
User Research: One of the primary goals of a Product Manager is to give
the customer what they want. The three user research techniques that
are currently most frequently used are usability testing, interviews, and
surveys.
Market Research: For Product Managers, It is an absolute necessity for
success. They will have to accumulate & interpret information about
market drivers, products & customer needs.
Communication Skills: It is your responsibility as a product manager to
express your expectations to product developers and designers in writing
and verbally. To make sure they carry out in a method that fits your
requirements by expressing the product’s necessity & explaining
consumer pain points that are to be solved.
CAREER TRANSITION TO PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
3. Consulting
Strong Analytical Skills: It will help you in making well-informed decisions
by analyzing the data & understand how well you & your team are doing,
how successful you’ve been at solving the customer problems, and how
well you are navigating things with other teams.
Prioritization: It is a key skill for problem-solving. Your success will depend
on your ability to perform straight-back calculations and efficiently
measure the impact of resources required.
Stakeholder Management: Stakeholders are the key to building a team.
In PM, decision-making is not a one-man task & the smartest way is to
collect & sythesize inputs from stakeholders & having the skill to manage
stakeholders is important because the outcome of the decisions directly
impacts the stakeholders.
4. Design
Basic Interaction Design Skills: The objectives of their users should be
clear to a product manager, who can then build product features on
these objectives. In addition, it's crucial to establish the user's path
through the many screens and pages of the product, as well as the site's
general information architecture.
Usability Testing: Usability testing is a method for determining how
simple or complex people find a company's product to be. PMs test the
ease of use, efficiency & user-friendliness of the product to gain data for
improvements.
CAREER TRANSITION TO PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
Skills You’ll Need To Build
Regardless of your current designation, there are a few hard skills that you
need to incorporate to break into the Product Management space.
1. Product Lifecycle Utilization: It's crucial that you comprehend how to
take advantage of the product lifecycle in your role as a product
manager. This is because it makes it easier for you to plan each step of
any product you're working on, including its launch, growth, maturity, and
decline, along with the teams you collaborate with.
2. Product Release Management: To ensure a seamless product release, it
is your responsibility to ensure that everyone, including other managers,
designers, and developers, is aware of the precise end goal of the new
product or update and how they intend to get there.
3. Product Strategy Development: Your product strategy outline who your
target market is, your customer personas, and how you intend to be
successful with your new product. They assist you in developing clear
plans to build the product and practical tactics for designers and
developers to work with.
4. Knowledge of Agile Methodology: Agile is a project management
methodology that allows for creating products fast & flexibly. Agile
knowledge actually increases your employability and increases your
appeal to companies. Nobody wants their product manager to rush
through upgrades that aren't functional or to miss deadlines.
5. Prototyping Abilities: It is one of the ways to communicate with the
stakeholders before moving into the full development phase to avoid
wasting money by identifying the problem early on. As a Product
Manager, you should be able to prototype the idea & illustrate & test it.
6. A/B Testing: It is done to compare two versions of a product to see which
works best. This helps you in knowing about the consumers' needs &
implementing them to create a better product.
CAREER TRANSITION TO PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
You don’t have to worry if you are a fresher/recent graduate, a clean slate
is always good to start! Learn the skills, concepts & tools of Product
Management and break into it with an entry-level position. Like we said
earlier, anyone with curiosity and the right attitude can walk the road to
PM.
HOW TO BREAK INTO PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT?
Well, we are not going to answer that here because who are we to tell you
that when we’ve got an entire lineup of Expert Product Managers who’ve
worked with top companies like [Link], Sharechat, Flipkart,
Microsoft, Atlassian, Amazon, etc.?
AltUni Presents Advanced Product Management Program With Expert
[Link]
Product Managers & Get Industry Exposure By Working On A LIVE Project!
It is one of our most popular programs and has garnered a rating of 4.14
out of 5 from our participants! So here we are, with another batch of the
Advanced Product Management program, designed & crafted by
experts to help you maximize your chances of building your dream career
in Product Management.
What’s In It For You?
40+ hours of live sessions with industry experts from [Link],
Sharechat, Flipkart, Microsoft, Atlassian, Amazon, etc.
Get invaluable industry exposure by working on a Live Industry Project
with Apollo Finvest
Jump into a Management role by learning in-demand Product
Management topics like Product Roadmap & Strategy, UX, Wireframing,
A/B Testing, Design Thinking, etc.
Learn to work on tools & frameworks like Design Thinking, Balsamiq,
MURAL, Wireframing, etc.
Learn by analyzing unique Product Management case studies & real-life
examples.
Guest speaker sessions by Expert Product Managers from organizations
like Citrix & Microsoft
HOW TO BREAK INTO PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT?
Additional Benefits That Help You Crack Any PM Interviews!
Interview prep sessions from industry experts in every module.
Ace any Product Management interview with AltUni Career Services;
1-on-1 sessions for CV editing, mock interview, & profile building.
Get Free access to Klub AltUni where you’ll be enabled to be more
employable by helping you make informed career decisions.
Get industry-recognised InsideIIM & AltUni certification
Get recording access for 3 Months
[Link]
Ace Any Product Management Interview & Build Your Dream Career Path
With High Returns!
Still in a dilemma? Take a look at what our alumni have to say!
“Simply awesome! Cutting-edge info backed up by top-notch content.
Ellora you delivered it in a very captivating way, leaving no question
unanswered. Truly inspirational and hope to learn more from you in such
future programs” - Abhishek Malshette
“Prior to this workshop, I felt a lot intimidated by the domain but now after
the classes, I am realizing that I have an affinity towards this domain and
would really love to hone my skills towards the same. Thank you InsideIIM
and Ellora for helping me navigate my fear in the right direction!” -
Debrupa Kar
“I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions. I joined this program with a desire to
learn and learn I did! Meeting and working with people from all walks of life
and with such diverse experiences opened my mind up to different
perspectives and enhanced my domain knowledge”
- Parvathy T R
HOW TO BREAK INTO PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT?
“Thanks, Ellora and AltUni for conducting this program in Product
Management. I was amazed by how informative, yet entertaining every
session was conducted. Case studies were conducted in an engaging
way and helped in learning the concepts better. Would love to be part of
another series.” - Gaurav Kumar
[Link]
Acquire In-Demand Product Management Skills & Tools And Get Interview
Prep From Expert PMs! Apply Now!