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A product manager is a professional role that is responsible for the development of products for an organization, known as the practice of product management. Product managers own the business strategy behind a product (both physical and digital products), specify its functional requirements, and generally manage the launch of features.

1. Apr 18, 2021 The national average salary for a Product Manager is $110,570 in United States. Filter by location to see Product Manager salaries in your area. Salary estimates are based on 28,313 salaries submitted anonymously to Glassdoor by Product Manager employees.
2. A product manager is a professional role that is responsible for the development of products for an organization, known as the practice of product management.Product managers own the business strategy behind a product (both physical and digital products), specify its functional requirements, and generally manage the launch of features.
3. The Product Manager is responsible for the product planning and execution throughout the Product Lifecycle, including: gathering and prioritizing product and customer requirements, defining the product vision, and working closely with engineering, sales, marketing and support to ensure revenue and customer satisfaction goals are met.

Editor’s note: This is part 1 of 2. Below, we’ll cover the important soft skills that every PM should master. Check out part 2 for an in-depth look at essential PM skills like coding, street statistics, and running more effective meetings!

As software continues to eat the world, the product manager has become an increasingly important role. Stripped down to its core, this role is about building and implementing the vision for product success. It’s kind of the heart of a software business.

While the responsibilities and principles of the discipline may be applied differently within different organizations, this role always sits at the intersection of multiple functions. As the product owner, the PM is like conductor—directing the action across 3 areas: the business, the customer, and the technology team.

It’s a tough job that requires broad mastery across several domains and skills. PMs also need certain soft skills in order to successfully navigate the many interpersonal hurdles they have to clear on any given day.

What does a product manager do?

At a high level, the product manager guides a cross-functional team through the entire strategic and tactical product lifecycle, from ideation and roadmap to development, refinement, ongoing optimization, and growth. The role often also includes contributions to positioning, messaging, and pricing strategy.

In other words, the product manager is basically the go-to point person for any product-related decisions. The PM is responsible both for solving day-to-day problems and meeting short- and long-term customer and business objectives.

Because the product manager’s role straddles multiple functions, a lot of their time is spent juggling priorities and communicating between departments. They not only have to collect and assess input from customers, key stakeholders, business leaders, and functional team leaders, they also have to translate those concerns from group to group so everyone is speaking the same language. At the same time, the PM needs to articulate and champion their own vision for the product.

Sounds easy, right?

Oh, one more thing: The product manager needs to accomplish all of this on time and on budget.

What does a product manager job description look like?

We’ve established that the PM role is one that involves existing within multiple departments and mentalities at once, but what does this look like on a day-to-day basis? To give you a little flavor, here’s a short-form hypothetical job description, aggregated from real-life listings on SaaS job boards:

Sample product manager job description:

The product manager is a pivotal member of our team who is ultimately responsible for making business decisions and creating product strategies that solve user challenges and drive revenue. Our goal is to build products users love. Your job is to use your unique blend of business and technical savvy combined with a big-picture vision and killer leadership and management skills to get us over that finish line on time and on budget.

In this role, you will be a champion for the customer and the product while working closely with internal teams and key stakeholders, including company leadership. You will craft a roadmap informed by market fit, product requirements, customer needs, and the go-to-market strategy. You will own the entire product lifecycle from strategic planning to tactical implementation to measurement and ongoing optimization, all with an eye on driving growth.

Key responsibilities include:

Product Manager Interview Questions

• Engaging with customers on a regular basis via multiple channels
• Specifying and prioritizing market and product requirements, feature sets, and key positioning and messaging elements
• Collaborating with designers and engineers to solve problems
• Curating, communicating, and managing a long-term product roadmap
• Analyzing external and internal data to identify gaps and opportunities
• Defining KPIs and setting targets that move the team toward success
• Conducting relevant research studies
• Developing internal and external product training plans
• Creating and maintaining profits and loss documentation
  

About you:

• Exemplary interpersonal, communication, and project management skills
• Excellent team- and relationship-building abilities, with both internal and external parties (engineers, business stakeholders, partners, etc.)
• Ability to work well under pressure, multitask, and maintain keen attention to detail
• Natural tendency to be positive, creative, and curious
• Team player who enjoys collaborating with others
• Genuine empathy toward customers and commitment to diving into the weeds on their challenges
• Strong leadership skills, including ability to influence cross-functional teams via diplomacy and tact
• Passionate dedication to your craft and desire to work with people who inspire you on a daily basis
  

There is also a new kind of product manager role emerging at product-led organizations. The “growth product manager” is a slightly different role that includes direct accountability for commercial business outcomes, like free to paid conversion rate and upgrade/expansion revenue,. Incorporating a growth mindset can be a pretty big shift for a more traditional product manager, but there's an undeniable shift toward product owning more commercial responsibility, and we think it's inevitable that all PMs at product-led organizations will eventually need this skill set.

You can read more about the growth product manager role and its unique requirements here.

How do they do all this?

Whether the role is a traditional product manager or a growth product manager, it’s clearly no easy task to fill such big shoes. To deliver outstanding products, the successful product manager needs many different skills, and must also possess inherent qualities necessary for surviving the rigors of the job.

To help prospective product managers (and the companies looking to hire them), we’ve compiled a list of 10 essential skills that every product manager needs. Let’s start with the “soft skills”:

10 soft skills that will help you become a stronger PM

1. Have a way with words

A product manager’s day is filled with communication tasks: meeting notes, Slack conversations, wikis, presentations, training materials, and—the Holy Grail—your product requirements document. You will spend a lot of time writing.

As the product manager, you are a repository keeper of all product knowledge. That means you should also be the disseminator of all knowledge. It’s your job to keep internal and external team members up to date on what’s happening. It’s also your job to provide clear and comprehensive direction and guidance to your design, engineering, and development teams. Poorly presented information can result in misaligned expectations and missed deadlines.

Writing your product requirements document is arguably one of the most important responsibilities you’ll have as product manager. It is the document your teams refer to from concept to launch for critical information about product direction, specifications, key dates, target audience, key performance indicators (KPIs), and much more. You need to be able to structure and write this document so that it’s easy to follow and understand, despite the depth and breadth of the information it contains.

Good writing skills also come into play when it comes to educating your stakeholders, partners, and company leadership about different product initiatives. You may at times need to employ the tools of persuasive writing to get buy in on a particular decision or justify a shift in strategy.

The bottom line is that words matter, so you need to know how to use them effectively to support your agenda.

2. Take time to talk to customers

Spending time with users can be the most rewarding part of the product manager role. It’s also one of the most effective ways to achieve product success. After all, customer loyalty is one of the key drivers of growth.

As the product manager, you are the voice of the customer within your organization. It’s your job to have an intimate understanding of their needs so you can effectively advocate for a solution that meets those needs. Having “passionate empathy” for your customers is especially critical in today’s SaaS markets where users have many options and can switch products easily and quickly.

The shortest route to deep customer knowledge is direct dialog. Take the time to get to know your customers. Make an emotional connection. Start by asking questions about how your product makes a difference in their lives. You want to get to the heart of the value they experience as well as any shortcomings.

Sample starter questions include:

• What is it about this product that resonates with you?
• How does it make things easier for you?
• What problem has this product helped you solve?
• What new problems would you like it to help you solve?
  

Be creative and consistent about engaging your users. You can send out surveys, post questions on social media, facilitate focus groups, or initiate 1:1 conversations. The point is to reach them where they are and communicate with them in a way that’s comfortable and convenient for them.

Most importantly, if you’re asking for customer input, make sure you put it to good use. Few things will cost you credibility with customers more than soliciting their opinions and then failing to act on them. When customers take the time to share their experience, make sure you acknowledge them. Respond to their posts, and keep them in the loop with how you’re putting their valuable advice to work.

3. Know how to sell (to engineers)

Julie Zhou, VP of Product Design at Facebook, states:

“Engineers make every good proposal real, and this fact should never, ever be forgotten. Even if your company has five, or five hundred, or five thousand engineers, engineers are not a 'resource.' They are the builders of the foundations, the keepers of everything that makes your product tick.”

As the product manager, it’s your job to sell your ideas to the people who can bring your vision to life—the engineers. To do this effectively, you need to understand how engineers think. This means need to be technically savvy enough to be comfortable discussing the technical aspects of your product. And you need to know how to effectively convey your product vision in a way that brings engineers on board.

Successfully pitching your ideas to engineers requires a combination of enthusiastic evangelism, inspirational storytelling, and authentic empathy.

Being an unabashed evangelist for your product is especially critical in larger organizations where you may be competing for shared resources. You need to be your product’s biggest fan—ready, willing, and able to convert others to your cause.

Inspirational storytelling is a powerful way to create support for your product. This might includeve handed a task (and the corresponding responsibility!) over, let the other person run with it. Invite them to consult you if necessary, but otherwise make it crystal clear that they have complete ownership. This approach gives them the chance to showcase their skills, provides space for a key learning experience, and ultimately sets them up for long-term success.

Debrief consistently.

Just like you track the performance of your product after it's launched—to figure out what worked and what didn’t—you should also track how team members performed on delegated tasks. Talk with them about their experience. If things didn't go smoothly, brainstorm collaboratively about how to handle things better next time.

5. Be able to support and influence others

If you want to be a successful product manager, you’d better have serious people skills. Business and technical skills are important, but you won’t be able to bring your product vision to life without similarly strong leadership and interpersonal skills.

Product management isn’t just about being a taskmaster—it’s about supporting and empowering others by understanding their strengths and weaknesses. And it’s about having enough influence to get buy-in and keep everyone working together toward the same goal. Turning off imessage on iphone.

For this, product managers need soft skills (like those on this list). Emotional intelligence and empathy help you read and manage situations more accurately and tactfully. Relationship management skills enable smoother operations and help with conflict resolution. Self-awareness helps you stay objective so you can be an effective champion for the customer.

A good product manager also takes on the responsibility of maintaining alignment between the vision for the product and the product team. This requires connecting day-to-day tasks to the broader strategy so that a) initiatives are properly prioritized, and b) the extended team understands—and is inspired by—the ultimate impact of their work.

In short, you need to motivate people by clearly articulating the big picture and why it matters to the customers and the company; and then you have to help each team member to do their best work in support of your collective goals.

Wondering where the rest of the list is? Keep reading for more essential PM skills, including “street statistics” and how to run more effective meetings.

Delivering value through effective Program Increment execution

with Certified SAFe® Product Owner / Product Manager

Develop the skillsets needed to guide the delivery of value in a Lean enterprise by becoming a SAFe® 5 Product Owner/Product Manager (POPM). During this two-day course, attendees gain an in-depth understanding of how to effectively perform their role in the Agile Release Train (ART) as it delivers value through Program Increments.

Attendees explore how to apply Lean thinking to decompose Epics into Features and Stories, refine Features and Stories, manage Program and Team backlogs, and to plan and execute Iterations and Program Increments. Attendees also discover how the Continuous Delivery Pipeline and DevOps culture contribute to the relentless improvement of the ART.

About SAFe Product Owner / Product Manager

Course Information

What Attendees Get

The class registration includes:

• Attendee workbook
• Preparation and eligibility to take the SAFe® 5 Product Owner/Product Manager (POPM) exam
• One-year membership to the SAFe Community Platform
• Course certificate of completion

Attendees must attend both days of the course in order to qualify for the exam.

Prerequisites

All are welcome to attend the course, regardless of experience.

However, the following prerequisites are highly recommended:

Product Manager Job Description

• Attend a Leading SAFe® course
• Experience working in a SAFe environment
• Experience with Lean, Agile, or other relevant certifications

Exam Details

Completion of this course gives you access to the exam and all related study materials as part of your Learning Plan in the SAFe Community Platform.

For more information about the exam and benefits of becoming a Certified SAFe professional, click the More Exam Details button.

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Professional Development Units & Scrum Education Units

Duration	2 days
PMI Certification	Technical	Leadership	Strategic	Total
PMP®	10.50	3.00	1.50	15.00
PgMP®	10.50	3.00	1.50	15.00
PMI_RMP®	0.00	3.00	1.50	4.50
PMI_SP®	0.00	3.00	1.50	4.50
PMI_ACP®	10.50	3.00	1.50	15.00
PfMP®	0.00	3.00	1.50	4.50
PMI_PBAsm	0.00	3.00	1.50	4.50

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Topics Covered

• Becoming a Product Owner/Product Manager in the SAFe enterprise
• Preparing for PI Planning
• Leading PI Planning
• Executing Iterations
• Executing the PI
• Becoming a Certified SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager

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