 Hello everyone and welcome to the webinar. What is product management? So before we address the elephant in the room Product management, let me introduce myself first I'm Shilpi and I'm a product manager with intercom Previously I've worked with startups like Mahalna Tech. Just sharejet and modge and Vmock in India I also had a brief stint with a management consulting working as an associate consultant You can find me on Twitter and on my website. I'm shall be calm If you have any follow-up questions or queries or just want to chat to me Further about anything that I talk about in the next few minutes So let's get into it So what am I going to be talking about in the next few minutes to set the context I'm going to be talking about what is product management product management skills variation in product management rules and Then I'm going to try to answer some frequently asked questions So before I get into what is product management Let me put a disclaimer here this webinar is designed for aspiring and new product managers and Anything shown is for illustrative purposes to convey the bigger picture the bigger story This is not an exhaustive or ultimate guide to product management Rather, this is how I think of product management and I Think in the last five years of my product management career This framing has been useful to me and I'm sharing this For the benefit of any new and aspiring product managers so Let's get into it Generally speaking I'm going to paint a picture which a lot of you might be aware of or Resonate with a lot Product managers do not really cold Product managers do not really design Product managers do not always write sequel to analyze data Product managers do not really make engineering capacity plans Product managers are not focused on marketing or sales alone Product managers do not always cure their launches or product features Product managers do not make pretty slides like consultants Then what do product managers really do? What is product management really if I had a dollar for every time somebody has asked me this question? I'll probably be Elon Musk, but jokes aside This is a very confusing question for anybody who has not worked in product management. This is something which Makes them go. Hey, what do product managers really do? How do I even understand the job before getting into it? So this next few minutes is going to be trying to Understand what is product management really if it is not coding not designing not doing what is it? So product management is about defining a product and ensuring its success PNs do a lot of things and require many different skills So before I move on to the next one, I'm just gonna keep this here for a bit. So this is a little oversimplification product management is about finding the product and ensuring its success and PNs do a lot of things like any other person would do and they require many different skills So this is a lot of generalization but bear with me as I clarify some more things here And There's more PM role varies a lot Knowing these things that you need to do as a PM and acquiring these skills is required But not sufficient information to join or aspire to join any company as a product manager So I know that you're feeling like this Okay, just like It's evident right and isn't that oversimplification? Possibly So let's get into the details As I said PM do many things Which may require different skills But what are these many skills that many things that PNs do and What do they typically do what do what does the day look like on a daily level? So Before arriving at a project or a particular feature PMs Typically do a lot of customer research competitor research PNs try to understand the customers. They're very close to the customers go on customer interviews understand the pain points They consolidate feedback from multiple channels and they Try to see if These customers and their pain points are solved by some other company some other competitor How is it being solved? What makes sense for them to do? What doesn't make sense for them to do? Where do they create differentiation in their product? Where do they? Say that we need to absolutely meet this particular industry standard. So PM work is a lot of customer and competitor research Uh PMs also use data and form insights about their product based on data This is also taken as an input to uncover many product opportunities or For the research about certain areas of the products or pain points. So Uh analytics is a very cool part to PM in as well. Uh PMs also align with company and overall product strategy to prioritize the problems to be solved in the roadmap They do product road mapping Which means that they ensure that out of all these problems that they know which problems are to be prioritized and To ensure business and customer success. So they Do product strategy and rule mapping After they have taken inputs from customer research competitors analytics business every other stakeholder uh, so Once they have done the road mapping, they know that hey, this is how the next three months six months a year Of my products going to look like what i'm going to be focusing on at this time. This is how it's going to evolve the product So after they've done the roadmap PMs Typically, let's say for a particular feature or a project or problem statement that they want to work on PMs typically define the problem What exactly is the customer facing? back it by data customer research interviews competitor research and all the good stuff and then PMs Get into the details about what exactly The scope is going to look like for that particular feature. What is the minimal scope or the minimum viable products? to ensure that Something is out there to get feedback faster and to iterate over their products PMing is not about launching Perfect products because there's nothing like perfect product It's about launching minimal things to get feedback fast. Was that useful? Was it not useful? If useful, what next? What else can help? So all of these fall under the bucket of PM then ultimately every PM's Job is to ensure that team is shipping the right things And a lot of people define product management as getting things done. So PM's responsibility It is PM who's accountable for Like getting things out there to their customers, which are valuable and useful to them So PMs leave no stone unturned to get things done So that they can ship PMs deliver and measure outcomes so PMs ensure that the products That they are working on is marketed effectively the things that they're launching Has expected outcomes that they predicted and if not then what is the reason what can be changed to Uncover more opportunities there in case that the product Has not been adopted then trying to find a root cause of it It has not been able to achieve certain outcomes and finding What why exactly has the product not Performed as expected and then iterating learning from it and then Making more changes iterating on the product and similar lifecycle of Doing all the research and figuring out using data. So This is what typically PMs do and none of this is in silo. So PMs work with designers Data scientists analytics data research Lot of different people within the company to ensure that all of these things Are smooths and working they take inputs to a lot of things They give their feedback to a lot of different departments and streams. So it's a lot of communication So to answer our first question Product managers do not really code but interact with engineers and coders on frequent basis To ensure the team is building the right products and they're building it right Product managers do not really design But they interact with designer on a frequent basis to ensure that product designs are solving for the most important customer pain points They bring the customer's view point ahead and pain point ahead. They have a lot of empathy Product managers do not write SQL exactly to analyze data But interact with data scientists or analysts on a frequent basis to ensure that correct use of data Is data is being used correctly to drive the business and product success and to drive The team towards the goal that they have Product managers do not really make engineering capacity plans But product managers interact with engineering managers to ensure that the right things are prioritized and scope to maximize the impact With whatever limited capacity is there in terms of engineering and the specific skillset that The team has so what is the maximum impact that they can create as a team? Product managers are not focused on marketing and sales alone but product managers interact with PMM if there are PMM in the company and sales if this sales team exists to ensure that the products tell the story that actually maximizes the adoption And maximizes the outcome that they're trying to achieve and are able to be sold or to be monetized Product managers do not always queue their launches or whatever they're releasing but ensures that product Quality is good for their customers to be used This can mean a lot of different things for different companies and different product managers But it's the responsibility of product manager to ensure that they're launching the product and good quality product Product managers do not make pretty slides like consultants. Oh, well All right, so product management managers do a lot of different things as we just saw And may require many different skills So thing that you see Right now is a tweet by Suresh Toshi. If you don't follow him, please give him a follow. He shares amazing knowledge about product on twitter and These are the major category of skills that any product manager needs to hone over time and develop over time and This is so product managers should have a commercial sense. They should know How business works. They should know how finance and pricing works. They should know what Actually is selling from their product how to promote their product. So product managers should have a commercial sense product manager Generally develop product sense after a while. They should have a lot of empathy they should Get domain knowledge and they should use their creativity in their solutions and product thinking Uh, they need to have analytical sense, which is Driving data analysis and using logic to come to conclusions and product decision Execution sense. So this is basically Where they mean that hey, what is realistically possible how to get into detail how to get this executed What is stopping us how to make sure that it doesn't stop us from executing? So this is around execution self sense product managers Think about product vision and strategy. So they need strategical thinking vision storytelling being able to communicate their vision Product management as you go up the ladder of PMing it becomes about PM management where you try to mentor other pms. You try to Uh Meta execute things you try to make frameworks around decision making career coaching So it's about PM management as well as you go up the ladder and become from an IC to a product manager manager And uh product management is also about influential communications. So as I said, none of the things that I mentioned before is in silo So product managers have to interact with a lot of people on daily basis so a lot of stakeholder management a lot of collaboration a lot of communication a lot of listening writing speaking and product managers need to ensure that The business is happy. The team is happy. Everybody's happy and the customers of course are happy product managers Need to think critically. So they need to have common sense They need to have awareness and framework thinking they need to think about how to approach a problem So all of this skills combined Hooning all of these combined Makes a product manager great. So uh, this is a lot of skills We're gonna talk about how do I get to these skills? But uh, just a disclaimer here Nobody no product manager is perfect in all of these skills Some some people have different strengths and some weaknesses Uh, they find opportunities to hone their skills So this is a very exhaustive list of product management skills and nobody's perfect But this is what you need to hone over time if you want to grow in your product management career So I'm gonna move on to the next one But that's not all that's a lot, but that's not all so ideally You would think that all p.m. Do all things like what we mentioned customer research competitor research and all the things that we mentioned before Uh, and possess all the skills that we talked about like product sense analytical sense execution sense So ideally you would think that should that's how it works But practically or in real scenarios p.m. Role depends a lot It varies a lot So depending on some things p.m. Can be doing a lot more of let's say customer research or analytics and Depending on certain things They might need to have communication more than other skills or execution more than other skills so Practically a p.m. Does not like always do everything At all times and have all the skills They are sometimes required to be doing certain things more and possess certain skills more than other skills, so let's Ah, so what does the p.m. Role actually depend on? The like so far we have talked about a very broad generalization and things like that But the devil actually lies in the tiny tiny details of product management Uh, because it's not a very tangible thing. You don't have a clear winner always in product management It's more like a decision making and aligning everybody. So What exactly is p.m. Role? Is in the details and the devil Of the answer lies in the detail So i'm going to get into some details about what are these factors which make the p.m. Role vary or what Does the p.m. Role change from one? p.m. To another upon what are these things? uh, and why why do I talk about like this variation in p.m. Roles and Why do I talk about Like why am i reiterating the point that day-to-day product manager role varies a lot depending on certain things because knowing what is product management and the skills it takes is required for you as a new or aspiring p.m But it is not sufficient information for you to understand which company to join or which role to take on or How do you make your next career move? And should you be become a p.m. And if you should then which company which product which particular p.m. Role should you take up? So Let's get into the factors which actually influences the real daily day-to-day p.m. Role business model so or Business or the company is it a b2b model? It is a b2c model and in general overall like What is the business model for the company that you're going to be working with? What is the industry of the company that you're going to be working with is it fintech is it Is it so social media? What is the industry that you're looking for to join? The company size so Are you looking forward to join a startup mid-size company or a large company as a product manager? Things differ a lot in the p.m. World for a p.m With a small company and a large company Product size so the product that you'll be managing or working on Is it going to be used by 100 people or 100,000 people? and It's different from company size for a reason because they're smaller or niche product within big companies like google and there are Big products within small companies. I'm not sure of that. But anyway, the point is It can be a product with huge usage or traffic or it can be a product with a niche market or a niche usage What stage of the product is in is this product at their start phase a growth phase and end phase and again, this is very different from product size and company because of the fact that Google can own a lot of end-stage products and they might actually close them like or could way back or google can have very small products like Google Bolo, maybe or something like that. So basically a big company can have Different products at different stages in their life cycle. Some may be in their nascent initial stage. Some may be in their Growth phase and then some may be more mature like Google search So what is the product stage that you are thinking to manage? How big is your team going to be? And does the team have a PMM? Does the team have a designer? Does the team have a dedicated? Mobile engineer, so all of these things matter a lot while choosing a product manager's role Who is the customer? Who is the customer? Which region? And it might not sound very obvious, but a lot of times PM roles vary a lot because of different pain points faced by certain geographies, certain demographics. So who is the customer? Let's say which region do they belong to? How do they behave? What is the customer's role? What is the customer's role? What is the region? Do they belong to our How does it behave? Do they belong to certain demographics? Is it focused on certain particular groups of people or is it more wider and global product than that? So all of these factors Changes the product manager role on daily basis I'll give you some instances to help you understand what I mean by this Uh A PM with a B2C company may run more large scale experiments than a PM with B2P company So B2C generally end up having more number of users as compared to B2B so on an average So all of these are statistically speaking instances like random instances to get you an idea But yeah, so B2C company product manager May actually Run large scale experiments and run av tests than B2B company it makes sense for them to and They might but B2B PMs might actually be closer to sales department and people who are selling the product Then a PM at a B2C company because generally it sells selling sometimes So a lot of PM rule changes depending on this Uh PM in a social media industry may be more focused on increasing the daily active users monthly active users Engagement or retention while a PM then e-commerce industry may consider Sales or revenue as an odd star or conversion if they're working on certain part of the product a PM and FinTech Actually may work more closer with legal and compliance's theme department Then a PM with let's say they might work closely with teachers educators students and a lot of different people over there PM with a big company may need to Communicate more influence more get more alignment from a lot of different stakeholders may need stakeholder management much more Than a PM With a startup but a PM with a startup may need to wear multiple hats. They might have to do QA They might to have put the data on their own. They might have to write sequels on their sequel queries on their own so PM rule depends a lot here and then PM working with a new product may need to do more research about the market and take more riskier bets Than PM working with an already established product So for new product, you may not have a lot of data not a lot of knowledge already You're still like figuring out the customers So you may have to take a riskier bet And research much much more than PM working on already established product and Already a mature product where there's a lot of data. There's a lot of behavior patterns a lot of interviews a lot of new x research A lot of research already done in the past A PM with fully functional autonomous team which has multiple different people with different skills may not You know need to QA their products because maybe they have like a person who QA's or I'm just oversimplifying but Like pn has to wear whatever hats that need to be worn to launch the product So a PM Which doesn't have like a UX researcher or UX designers might need to wireframe a lot on their own and think about the science much more than a PM Who has a designer in their team? so and On the last point about customers and who the customers are PMs working on Certain demographics or certain geographies may deal with certain problems, which are very specific to that particular demographic or geography And it might depend on the cultural and behavior nuances of that particular demographic and Like they might have to deal with specific problems that other PMs don't face working on global products But there are different issues around legal and compliance is when you work on global products. So A lot of this sums up the original point that uh, PM rule changes a lot depending on the context so did what is the real answer to what is product management and I would say it all depends it depends on the context product management though there are certain overall highlights and themes around product management that we discussed that things people do in as a product manager and there are an overall level of skills that you will hone over time, which is Communication products and a lot of those skills. So there are an overall things about product management, but When you get into the daily activities of product manager or how you will feel over time The real answer is it depends on the context and what company what product what customers What market are you solving for? So This is the real answer It all depends on the context Okay, I'm going to take a brief pause here and This was about product management overall What do you need to do as a product manager what skills you need to per possess to become a good product manager and then How the PM rule varies a lot on different factors and how it influences you as a PM Moving on to frequently asked questions Seems like a lot of skills to become a PM. How do I acquire some of these skills or become better at some of these skills So I know that skill chart was very huge and large and to be honest I am developing a lot of those skills and don't feel that I'm up to mark On a lot of skills. So first thing is acknowledge that nobody's perfect You will have some skills better honed and then others require more attention and developing So you need to identify the ones that you're good at the ones you need to improve and uh Once you have identified this You need a plan to improve certain skills. You need to prioritize the skills that you need to improve and How do I generally improve my skills is by pushing myself in uncomfortable opportunities? So take up opportunities be uncomfortable a little bit, but get feedback Do those things get feedback and improve on those skills Like for example, don't think your influential communication is up to mark and You get nervous while speaking Speak in a webinar You don't think you have product sense or you think like you lack prior experience to have domain knowledge So take up an opportunity which interests you and work with someone who does And you can learn from them that a lot of things you pick as you grow in your product management career from people around you Personally, I think the only way to learn product management or to develop those skills is by doing product management and to actually Doing those things. So there's no Escape or a second tour to success in a product management career. You need to do those things to become better at them Let's move on to the next one I have experience. So working as a XYZ for this many years I am looking to move to a pm role do companies Hire people like me for pm role and can I find success in this role? Again, it depends you can probably answer this yourself if you take a little deeper and get more specific Like we said pm role varies a lot. So different companies have different requirements For different pms. They some of them May need like a new person with more curiosity and common sense then somebody Who because they might not need to do pm management, let's say or communication that much. Let's say so It varies a lot different companies are different people depending on who they require I've got stage in their life and If you think you have certain skills that pm role needs Because of your previous experience or in general Then the answer is yes, you are as good as anybody else to move into product management Do you think you can develop other important skills needed in the pm role? Like let's say if you don't have certain skills like product sense Is there a way for you to develop it? And hone your skill to get pm roles If so if the answer is yes Both of these questions then find the right companies who would be able to hire you and Go through the process improve your interview skills be ready to tell why do you think you can be a good pm and What are your strengths and what are your weaknesses growth opportunities? How do you see yourself in what excites you about pm world and just Be honest and open Finding success in this role is totally up to you and how you define your personal success And the same answer applies to freshers looking for pm roles So find the right opportunities pm There are companies who hire for freshers apm or pm rotational programs and find the right opportunities and What do they require and apply? Don't let the rejection deter you from applying take it as a learning experience improve your interview skills and keep applying rejection is a part of life is an integral part of life And also the product management process so we'll move on to this one and How do I prepare for pm interviews? I think this is a very common question you'll find a lot of answers on the internet and What i'm going to do is leave you with certain resources, which might be helpful to you There are tons of material on the internet. What you need to do is actually develop your pm skills understand how best to tell your story Take the interview as a two-way street to understand What is expected from that role in the particular companies as we talked about pm role varies a lot And you need to know what you're getting into before you actually get into it. So just Read up about it prepare yourself look at books youtube channels join the communities follow amazing product people and Find other resources on the internet There are a lot of links and resources on the internet for To prepare for pm interviews. I would especially call out the product school community and Since this is a platform i'm taking from product school to Do this webinar so a product school is a great great Great initiative to encourage people to get into product management and to help them understand how to and If it is fit for them So with that I would wrap it up Uh, thank you so much for listening in. I'll try to summarize things Just very very very clear very very briefly We talked about what is product management product managers need to do a lot of different things Like completely research and a lot of different things and they need a lot of different skills like communication product sense and a lot of different other skills pm role varies a lot depending on factors like company industry company Customer that they're targeting and the product really The product area that you're going to be working on and Then we talked about general questions like can somebody get into product management? How do I in how do I improve my skills? How do I prepare for interviews? And the answers like I don't think anybody can give you the right answers to those because there are no right answers it is you who can actually Decide what works for you. What are the skills that you need honing? What kind of resources work for you? It can be a book or it can be a youtuber. It can be a community-driven Approach so you decide what works for you if you want to get into product management you find the correct opportunities that will take that will be like for you in your career at that time and The answers lies within So, thank you so much for listening in and if any of you amazing people want to join an amazing mission At intercom have a look at intercom careers. We are growing and would love to hear from you To get in touch with me or to ask any other questions you have or Give me any feedback follow up on this talk. You can visit my website. I'm should be dot com You can send me a dm on twitter actually or you can shoot me a mail So it would help me a lot to know to hear back from viewers Of this particular webinar It would be very helpful for me to understand if this was useful or not for you and What stage are you in in your career and what could have been put in or answered in this webinar To make it more useful. So feedback is the oxygen for growth Or not just products but for people as well So I would love to hear from all of you lovely people Tell me if this went good and this was useful for you or tell me is this suck and this Already told you the things that you knew or you know any other feedback about how this could have gone better So thanks for listening in I'll tune out. Bye