As a Technical Product Manager, you are responsible for the overall success of a product. Your role is to manage the product at every cycle, coordinating with internal team members (marketers, developers, designers) and the client to deliver the right product to customers. To perform your role better, you need to have a technical background, be innovative, be a leader and possess strong analytical and project management skills. 

Whether you are managing an internal or external product, you need to be at speed with all the aspects of a product and take note of important dates such as the product launch. As a Product Manager, you are the CEO of the product, you determine its vision and strategy and make very important decisions about a product such as product features. But, in the process of making decisions about a product, feedback is critical. Take time to listen to what the product users, as well as your team and the client, have to say about a product. In essence, you want to build and deliver a product that customers will appreciate.

How can you become a better product manager and make better products?

Understand Your Customer

What are you solving for? Who are the users and what are their pain points? Interacting with customers informs your final decision of what the product will be and what it will look like. After defining the problem, you then define your target audience. Being deliberate about understanding an ideal customer helps you to build the right product that will delight them.

Understanding and analysing your target audience through surveys or testing prototypes exposes you to other problems which the same or other products can solve. For example, you might discover that on top of your e-commerce store, users also want a mobile app for easy accessibility.

Create a Product Road Map

Your aim is to create a sustainable product that will be used in the long run. Without a sustainable business model, you run the risk of your product failing. To ensure a successful and sustainable product, align the product strategy with the business model.

Provide Timely Support Services

As a point of contact between your team and the client, time is of the essence. Feedback from clients or users helps to detect and solve problems before they escalate. Responding to requests promptly and communicating them to your team builds a good working relationship between the client and your team. Help your team to understand the product and bring them up to speed with the product goals. Always remind yourself that you are the product’s vision carrier, things only move when you move.

At BongoHive Consult, we host weekly demos where team members showcase what they have been working on during the week. The objectives of the demos are to ensure that the team is working efficiently and the product being developed meets the client and customer needs.

Understand the Market and Competition

The products that you are building might have been built before by several industry players, all competing for the same customers. It is your role to break through the clutter and persuade the audience to use your product. Of course, you can’t win the entire market but you need to strive to gain a fair market share by offering something new to customers. To achieve this, you need to understand the tech market and customers. Take time to analyse what is on the market, how it is being offered and identify the gaps.

Analyse the Product’s Performance

Now that you have built a product and it is on the market, you want to measure its return on investment. If the product is not performing well, analyse what is not working- Is it the marketing strategy? Maybe the product is not user-friendly? Or maybe the checkout process on your web page is too long and complicated? The users have the answers!

The success of the products you manage lies in your hands. You can successfully implement products that customers and clients will value by implementing the strategies we have shared above.

If you are a Product Manager or an aspiring Product Manager looking to gain skills in Product Management, apply for the BongoHive Consult Coding Academy by 8th April 2021.