Roadmap to Understanding Product Management

Tech Square ATL Social Club sat down with product management connoisseur Lily Andemariam recently to discuss the basics of product management, recommended softwares, and the essential work product managers (PMs) do.

 
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According to Ademariam, a majority of what is done in product management is strategy-based and about being able to influence people and your superiors that you know what’s best for your customers. You really live between business, design, and development.

As a product manager, your job is to talk with your customers and have an understanding of their customers’ issues and their business needs. It’s knowing the objectives a product or feature will attain, and communicating what success would look like and turning that product or feature into reality. 

Before a product or feature becomes available, a large amount of research is needed to understand why this [product] is necessary, how long it will take to build it, and how much it will cost. After that is determined, the product manager will start roadmapping and breaking things down. 

Being able to break down the process of creating a product or feature is a huge part of what a product manager does. They are also in charge of letting their team know what comes first, prioritizing who’s doing what, and identifying what the customer satisfaction score that is anticipated from creating this product. 

To get even more insight around product management, we asked Ademariam a few questions: 


Q: In your experience, what product roadmapping software and tools do you find essential to your job? 

A: “I think you can build a roadmap on anything, it’s not necessarily the software that you are building it off of that matters, it’s the fact that you are building one and are following through and pivoting and adjusting where it is needed. I build roadmaps on Excel or VersionOne.”


Q: What benefits do the software and tools offer?

A: “Focus more on what you are doing instead of what platform you are using. Personally I don’t like Jira, they have too many features. I like Pivotal Tracker and VersionOne, but recommend VersionOne. The benefits it offers is it allows you to have everything in one place and gives visibility to everything at a detailed level. You can see which feature is being worked on, who owns it, and where it is in the process. As a product manager, to have it summarize it to that level for you is great.”


Q: How have you used them to plan releases and manage teams?  

A: “It is more of knowing where the work is and being able to follow-through [when] planning releases. I would only use these platforms to see where the work is and say ‘this is the package that is going out, not necessarily the details.’”


It’s important to remember that a well planned execution is more valuable than the software used. Andemariam intentionally says this because people believe software will fix things, when, in reality, it’s the people who do. The software just supports the PM. It isn’t a tech-first world, it is a people-first world, with tech support.  


 
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“The demand for PMs has been steadily rising over the past few years. We found that 56.4 percent of PMs surveyed are hiring one to five PMs in 2020, with 17.1 percent hiring from six to even more than 10 PMs. In the U.S. 12,173 positions were advertised on Glassdoor alone.” - Product School  


What are your thoughts on product management? Are you ready to dive into this ever-growing market?

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