I’m asking because I want to phase out of marketing and move into something a little more technical but still within the tech and SaaS industry.
I’m not good enough at programming to be a developer, don’t have enough “talent” to be a lead UX designer, but have enough understanding and knowledge of those areas to understand what needs to be communicated to users. I have been told I have good leadership skills, I’m very organized and have no issues with public speaking.
That being said what would you look for in a product manager? Does education matter? What kind of experience are you looking for?
I want to see what I need to do to equip myself appropriately before attempting to switch departments within my company or apply to another place.
Thanks
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The “pillars” of software product management are generally analytics, design, and project management. Analytics means you can use imperfect data to guide your intuition and figure out what parts of the product are going well or poorly. Design (including UI and UX) means that you’re able to design features in order to respond to the issues that you detected with data. And project management (including team leadership) means that you can efficiently lead a team to build that feature you designed.
Depending on your specific company and role, your job may lean more heavily toward one of these pillars than another. The best PMs are usually good at everything and exceptional at one thing, as you can then build an exceptional team by matching them with someone else who excels in one of their weak areas.
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@Felipe Ok this is really good for me to hear. I’m good at data and analysis. I’ve been running a few user retention and engagement campaigns (my primarily role is marketing and PR) and have been monitoring Google Analytics and do a ton of A/B testing for our app.
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I’d like to add one more question also, when being product manager, how much do you have to deal with classical project management related work?
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@Angela, I’d like to add one more question also, when being product manager, how much do you have to deal with classical project management related work?
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