The Roles and Responsibilities of a Product Manager

As the three archetypes of Product Managers emerge, there is one focus common across types of Product Managers: the customer.  

The three different personas of a Product Manager can transition into a number of roles including Product Managers, Product Owners, Chief Product Owners and beyond.

Product Managers: From less experienced all the way to seasoned Product Managers, empathy, storytelling, and user experience skills are required for a successful Product Manager. Some degree of hands-on product experience is ideal, as a Product Manager will be required to communicate basic product concepts and walk in with a hit-the-ground-running attitude.

Managing a team is also a highly critical part of the role, with a Product Manager expected to lead, provide guidance and coordinate the processes, relationships, and strategy of a product’s roadmap. At the heart of their work, a Product Manager needs to keep the user’s needs at the core of the problem their solving in order to create products that not only delight but address their pain points.

Product Owners: While Product Managers are advocates for the customer, Product Owners articulate detailed user stories, participate in detailed product developments, and address questions as the customer representative.

Product Owners work within the product development process which includes prioritising the backlog and estimating development effort. Put simply, a Product Owner is a role you play on a Scrum team whereas a Product Manager is the job itself.

VP of Product / Chief Product Owners (CPOs): At this stage of the Product Manager career path, VP or CPOs are less hands-on but work to determine the strategy and how a product line fits into an organisation. Roles and responsibilities of VPs or CPOs include budgeting, ensuring the product strategy aligns with company objectives, engaging with external communications, and solving internal team conflicts.

Product Manager vs Product Marketing Manager

In a number of markets, the role of Product Manager has also been split into two: a Product Manager and a Product Marketing Manager.

According to tech giant Atlassian, Product Marketing Managers improve a product team’s ability to reach customers and learn from product-tailored marketing campaigns and insights. Product Marketing Managers are responsible for developing the positioning, messaging, and unique value a product has with its target audience.

Where a Product Manager articulates the details around the ‘why’, the ‘what’, and the ‘when’ of a product’s features, whereas it is the Product Marketing Manager’s job to communicate these benefits into the marketplace.

Remuneration, job vacancies, and the future of product management

Product Managers are highly sought after position with research company Gooroo determining that the average Australian salary for a Product Manager was AUD $115,000 in 2018, with over 2,000 Product Manager roles available at any given time on SEEK.com.  

As there is no clear-cut route into Product Management, many eager applicants focus instead on the core competencies of the job.

The field of Product Management requires a multidisciplinary skillset that involves empathy for the customer and the ability to communicate to both internal teams and external stakeholders. A Product Manager must get buy-in from all functions of marketing, design, and development before testing and scaling a high performing, quality product.

Over the next few years, the role of a Product Manager will continue to evolve and focus more heavily on data-driven insights. As technology advances, the functions within Product Management will begin to automate, as niche products emerge from decreased production costs.

Furthermore, product management will continually increase the collaboration between teams, up to the point where it no longer serves a standalone role. Product Management will eventually infiltrate every part of an organisation’s operations.

As markets expand, the role of Product Managers will not only pertain to digital products but also to the testing of physical products. Focusing on the customer will no longer serve as a competitive advantage, with companies required to look at other ways to innovate or risk the chance of being disrupted.

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Learn how to develop your Product Management toolkit and be equipped with the mindset and skills to drive successful products with our part-time Product Management course.