Skills and traits of elite product managers
Product management is an increasingly lucrative career path. Do you have what it takes to fill the bill?
The days when IT was left to its own (literal) devices, content to work on the tech side of various projects, are on their way out. IT organizations are shifting to product-based methodologies, in which cross-functional teams made up of both tech and business pros focus on a single product or service offering. This organizational shift has given new importance to the product manager, who serves as the leader for such a team and acts as the point person throughout the product’s lifecycle.
A product manager must blend soft and hard skills, and balance input, concerns, and feedback from multiple departments, key stakeholders, business leaders, customers, and clients. As business organizational cultures shift to emphasize product managers, IT leaders have to know more about what makes a good one — and others filling a variety of roles, including those in tech-centered jobs, might be curious about what it takes to make the leap into product management.
We spoke to a wide variety of professionals, including current and former project managers and those who hire and mentor them, about what skills and traits they see as marking out the best of the best in this role. They talked about what you need to succeed, how you can upskill yourself if you’re interested in this career path, and how the skills you already have may give you a leg up.
“Products are a result of multiple components and know-how; they require the involvement of many people across an organization and its business partners — in engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, security, marketing, sales, customer support, finance, etc.,” says Charles Paumelle, chief product officer and co-founder of Microshare, a smart building data solutions company. “Product managers must juggle all these competing agendas and secure alignment from all these parties to get a successful product out.”
“Empathy is essential because product managers need to always keep in mind the raison d’être of their products — who will use them, and why will customers change habits to adopt a new product?” says Microshare’s Paumelle. “Too many products fail, despite being technically brilliant or aesthetically beautiful, because they serve no unmet need and therefore find no customer adoption.”
“As product development progresses, choices and compromises have to be made,” adds Microshare’s Paumelle. “Product managers must drive these decisions by striking the right balance between empathy (voice of the customer), business acumen (commercial viability for the organization), and technical acumen (technical feasibility of the product).”