Product Development Series #1: on Product Management and Product Manager

One of the crucial things in a startup is related to product development. As a business that has continuous innovation, startups are required to always update features. To ensure that this process occurs, it is important to understand two things, namely Product Management and the role of Product Manager in a startup.

When it comes to startup scale – in which there are business processes running to strive for revenue—a product can be defined as a solution to a problem experienced by consumers. Product properties are different from tools internal or custom software, because the product is generally enjoyed by heterogeneous and many consumers. So what elements make a product good?

In technical development, products are at the intersection of technology, business and user experience. And the essence of a quality product is that it must be useful, desired by consumers, useful and feasible to use. Product Management is a process to accommodate product development so as to achieve these goals. So that Product Management can be said to be a process of maximizing the business value of a product.

Product Manager Role

Basically the Product Manager (in this case for digital products) must be someone who understands programming structures – at least knows about algorithms and coding. However, its main role is more about decisions during product development, so Product Managers must understand in general stack managed technology.

A Product Manager's responsibilities include writing requirement (like user story) which describes the features of the product. wireframe and functionality details are also created by it, to ensure the product team understands every detail for the development process. To make this need, sometimes a Product Manager also needs to go directly to market share, conduct market analysis to interviews to validate the problem to be solved.

As described in the definition of Project Management, the process is a slice of several components. This has implications for the task of a Product Manager to condition the internal team within a company, not only the development team, but including the sales, marketing and support teams. In addition to unifying the vision, a Product Manager must also understand the various perspectives that these people have.

After the product has been developed by a team of developers, designers and others, the next task of the Product Manager is to take measurements, both measuring the progress of the process, conformity to specifications and testing status. This process must also be accompanied by a continuous analysis of product performance. The monitoring process also needs to be carried out to ensure that The roadmap products are maintained and work priorities can be organized.

In the final phase when the product is ready to be marketed, the Product Manager will usually be busy with the Business Development team to determine prices to forecast market share. When the product reaches the market, the Product Manager's job is not over. He still has to do purchase analysis, usage to determine the implementation strategy on the client side.

A good Product Manager

A good Product Manager is not one who focuses most of his time on internal matters. He still has to understand the characteristics of the market and consumers, to validate potential customers. The priority needed is on the output of the resulting product.

Communication skills are important to have. In addition to being able to reach outsiders, it is also important to be able to communicate understanding about the product to the entire team. A Product Manager inevitably has to have the agility to think and pay attention to details.

So far, it can be concluded that a product is a solution that is able to solve problems collectively. Product Management is used to create products that are focused on the mission. A Product Manager is in charge of managing the process in detail.