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Addressing the technical aspects of product development and management requires both deep technical knowledge and the natural ability to lead a product team. This is where the technical skills of the product manager come in handy.
The skills of different product managers vary from industry to industry.
In the software development field, some of the important basic skills required are:-
Agile Methodology Knowledge
Some of the most successful product managers use agile methodology for day-to-day tasks.
It consists of
Collaboration with users and being persuasive and convincing.
Adapting to sudden changes.
Work with the teams to produce efficient solutions.
It is efficient since it does not use the waterfall approach. This approach involves development and training hand in hand which saves time and resources. It also helps team members get a clear idea of their responsibilities.
2. Product Research
This is one of the most important skills since it defines a product and its features to the users.
It is required since the right audience can be its biggest users. It helps understand what users might like or dislike or even be willing to pay for the services provided.
Product research includes:-
Identifying potential users in the market.
Discover similar products and produce better quality.
Showcasing the product's most valuable features.
3. Product Roadmap Development Oversight
Any product needs pseudocode for its making. Basically means, an execution plan.
Here, a product manager comes into play and designs a roadmap for the product.
Technical product managers specialize in understanding the development aspect of the product.
This includes:-
Identifying the purpose of the product.
Product backlog prioritization.
Finding efficient building processes.
Checking for the feasibility of the product.
Gathering important product requirements.
4. Prototyping
A prototype is a functional version of the target product. It is just a reflection of the product which is enough to give ideas about potential flaws and aspects of the product.
This involves testing and developing the design, identifying the strengths, and testing it in real-world use cases.
This helps in:-
Correcting flaws in the model.
Gathering feedback from users as well as stakeholders.
Designing a practical image of the product.
5. A/B Testing
This is the phase where the efficiency of the product is measured. This helps when we can avoid launching the product and know the most valuable features the user cares about.
With the help of this, one can implement the wanted changes in the model.
This can be performed on:-
Different revenue models
Social marketing campaigns
Product's features list
UX design features
6. Data Analysis and Extraction
A product manager needs to convince a lot of people to approve a product. It includes stakeholders, users, and even team members. To support his arguments, he needs reliable data and hypotheses of all kinds.
This includes:-
Recognizing valuable data.
Understanding the data for potential insights.
Presenting the extracted information in an easy-to-understand manner.
Data literacy is a technical skill that every PM should have.
7. Data Collection and Management
It may sound similar to data extraction or analysis but the management of data is the next level!!
The ability to collect data from the right resources can easily smoothen the job of a Product Manager.
This includes:-
Setting boundaries for the needed data.
Turning the raw data into meaningful data.
Creating periodical reports to structure the developmental process.
8. Coding
A Product manager may not necessarily indulge in coding but should know about its aspects.
If a PM knows how to code, it can streamline the process of programming to a good extent.
Some of the basic things a PM should be familiar with are:-
Web development (Frontend and Backend web development)
APIs
Programming languages like Java, Ruby, PHP, Python, etc.
9. Technical Writing
The documentation of every important detail regarding the product comes under Technical Writing.
This demands knowledge and experience in technical writing.
Since the reports are also required by the non-technical members, good writing skills are a plus.
This includes:-
Gathering valuable information.
Turning data into easy-to-understand outlines.
Creating visual aids that help everyone understand it.
To be effective in technical writing, we need to gather the most important aspects of data, prioritize them accordingly and format them in a simple layout.
10. Product Marketing
This includes displaying every valuable aspect of a product to each and everyone may it be the users or the teams that help build it. The product needs to be valuable to the users so that in the end, a PM can realize business purposes and provide growth to the company.
Understanding marketing fundamentals include:
Getting to know where does the product stand in the open world market.
How to do branding to attract users.
Identifying the product's reach in the market and further increasing it.
Conclusion
Technical Product Manager is a role that requires decisions to be made for products that will be used by millions or billions of people. It is a more narrowed down role and people in this field are very satisfied with this as a career choice.
Learning new things is always in this field. This may seem a little tougher when we become older but as we cross the hurdles, it becomes so much more satisfying as we continue to grow.
This being pointed out, it's one of the most rewarding careers out there!!
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