A Day In The Life Of A Product Manager
Ever wanted to know what a Product Manager should be doing in a day? This is my day...
I recently saw a question asking what a product manager does in a day and if the 3 main things were:
1) writing tickets
2) prioritising tickets
3) QA testing
Nope. That’s not what we do.
Want to know what a product manager should be doing in a day?
1. Check the Data - first thing while I'm sipping my coffee, I look at the data. User data, behavioural data, numbers (churn, acquisition, $) to understand what is going on as well as check in on why with user research, surveys, interviews, customer support. Scan for risks and find problems that need solving.
2. Assess whether the product is on track to reach the organisational Goals/OKRs/KPIs.
3. Identify Gaps, highest priority problems to solve. Collaborating with others to solve product problems. Consider and validate options with users. Test hypothesis
4. Understand Risks (market conditions, competitors, internal capability) and have a plan to mitigate these risks
5. Craft and/or Communicate the Product Vision, Strategy with the rest of the organisation that are crucial to making it happen.
6. Work with commercials on the financial business case (NPV, BE, scenario analysis, forecasts). Understand costs and the pricing your users would be willing to pay based on the value they perceive of solving their pain (solve pain over problems. Understand the JTBD)
7. Design a product that solves user pain in a product led approach (includes design, core functionality, build, pricing, every step in the user experience of the product, communication/messaging within that user journey, how easy they can share and more)
8. Build iteratively with continual user community feedback. Prioritising user feedback that will result in getting closer to the business goals/OKRs vs away from them (yet if more users are asking for things that detract from business goals, consider reassessing strategy)
9. Work with internal and external partners to deliver products customers love. Negotiate when there are conflicting priorities.
10. Distill the product requirements into prioritised user stories and tasks. Draft acceptance criteria. Collaborate with squad to design and execute. At completion, user test experience. Ideally in an empowered team as a product owner.
11. Constantly validate product requests and test for business/customer value. Will they get you to the business goal. Validate with data (qual and quant)
The cost of being an output, ticket writing Product Manager rather than an outcome, data driven, validating Product Manager is huge!
Would you add anything to this list?
As a Product Manager, need help with optimising your day? Let me know