This means the path to product management is broadly similar to the project management career path, with a few crucial details. A solid roadmap is one of the most crucial tools available to a product manager. Strong deadline management, clear time management goals, and successful delivery strategies will make or break a product manager’s career. The product manager also defines what the product team delivers and creates a project timeline and schedule for implementation. That means making a release plan, which features actionable feedback and ideas, as well as prioritizing product features.

Head of Product: A Guide for Product Managers Eyeing the Top

• Their focus areas, skill sets, and day-to-day responsibilities can vary dramatically.
• After 10 years of studying the craft of product management, I’ve developed a deep understanding of what it means to be a product manager.
• We’ll go over a product manager’s job description to learn more about the responsibilities, skills and tools a product manager should know.
• They’re responsible for looking at the market and discerning trends, identifying new outcomes for the product, supporting the sales team and making sure that the product meets the needs of the value streams.
• Platform PMs serve multiple internal teams across products, engineering, design, and data.
• Lead teams in delivering a solution to the customer using the appropriate business measurements.
• As a burgeoning field, the role often has a wide variety of responsibilities and requirements at every company.

They also play a critical role in ethical AI use, preventing bias, ensuring transparency, and keeping user data secure. On top of that, they work closely with Engineers and Data Scientists to fine-tune AI models and optimize their performance. You won’t find a Bossy Product Manager or a Communicator Product Manager on this list. Become the data-savvy Product Manager every team need with our free micro-certification in Product Analytics. Qualifications for a job description may include education, certification, and experience. This Product Manager job description template is optimized for posting on online job boards or careers pages and is easy to customize for your company.

Product Manager vs. Project Manager

Platform teams often inherit old infrastructure, undocumented APIs, and fragile systems built quickly to support early product launches. Platform PMs must prioritize modernizing these systems while still delivering new capabilities. Unlike customer-facing products, platform work doesn’t always have clear external metrics like product adoption metrics or product-led growth metrics. Platform PMs must track indirect metrics like developer efficiency, system reliability, and reusability, which can Project Product Manager job be harder to quantify. We’re looking for those with curious minds, those that have a passion for building great products and for managing projects efficiently. A solid understanding of scope management, conflict resolution, and project facilitation will never fail to serve a fresh-faced or veteran product manager.

Build a foundation of technical skills

As AI becomes increasingly commonplace in all  tech products , this type of Product Manager is rapidly on the rise. In short, Growth PMs make sure products take off and keep climbing 🚀. Don’t get me wrong, these roles are vital parts of the Product Management lifecycle, but they aren’t Product Managers in the way we’re defining them here. Becoming a Platform Product Manager is about shaping the foundation that allows every product, every team, and every innovation to thrive. According to ZipRecruiter, the average salary for Platform PMs in the US is $160,000 per year, depending on industry, the company, and years of experience.

• Product managers without design knowledge, for example, may quickly find themselves floundering during the ideation phase of any product pitch.
• Their job is to make sure the team stays on track and delivers results without delays.
• The best platform PMs train themselves to see patterns across teams and products.
• Design work is crucial to the development of any product’s inception.
• On the other hand, if the team is doing Scrum, but doesn’t have a product manager, then the product owner often ends up taking on some of the product manager’s responsibilities.

Their focus areas, skill sets, and day-to-day responsibilities can vary dramatically. Explore Head of Product duties, skills, and responsibilities, plus tips for how to climb the ladder from Product Manager to leadership roles. Find out how to get into product marketing, even without experience. Get tips, personal stories, and expert advice to kickstart your Software engineering career. They frame them in terms of product delivery speed, developer productivity, and long-term scalability.

Program Management, Senior Manager

As a burgeoning field, the role often has a wide variety of responsibilities and requirements at every company. Across the board product managers often guide strategies, make decisions for their business and customers, and help teams communicate and collaborate cross-functionally. Product managers can also prioritize time management, balance team well-being and employ UX design principles. But touching every decision isn’t the product manager’s job—at least it shouldn’t be. One of the keys to great product management is empowering your team to make their own decisions by creating a shared brain—or a way of making decisions and a set of criteria for escalating them.