As a product manager (PM), I’m always asked: “What do you actually do?” The truth is, PM responsibilities can vary widely depending on the company. But at the core, PMs are mainly responsible for delivering an outstanding product experience for their target user(s).
For the sake of this article, imagine you’re a PM working on Wikipedia. Since Wikipedia is a big product, there are many PMs that work on it. Let’s say that you’re working on the layout experience of pages like this one. Your scope doesn’t involve the content of the pages itself, but the layout of the page, where the content lies and the overall appearance (e.g. font size, images sizes, etc).
Here are some roles and responsibilities that you have as a PM:
Leader
Firstly, PMs are leaders. You have a clear vision and roadmap of features to execute on. So you’ll likely have a multi-year strategy for the future of Wikipedia pages as well as a 1 year roadmap of features to work on until next year. You’re accountable for the product’s success and ensure that the team understands what they’re building, who they’re building for and why they’re building it. Your role is to then lead the team to take it from a vision to launch.
Great PMs take accountability, without authority, and deflect the credit to the team.
Teams rely on PMs to make tough product decisions. In most cases, there isn’t an obvious answer. An example of a strategic question could be, “Do you want to allow short videos in Wikipedia pages?”. Decisions to questions like these are high stakes because it could completely change how users use Wikipedia. So, PMs need to evaluate tradeoffs and make the prioritisation criteria very clear before deciding.
Researcher
PMs need to ensure their product solves the users’ needs and desires. So, researching the target user segment(s) is crucial. In your case, we need to thoroughly understand Wikipedia users as well as Wikipedia contributors, because both user segments are vital. You can research these segments through techniques like interviews, surveys or talking to users in-person. Setting, testing and validating hypotheses is critical in shaping a product that people actually want.
Salesperson
Effective PMs ‘sell’ frequently to clearly pitch and get buy-in from others. You need to sell to the team to get everyone on the same page about what the future of Wikipedia pages will look like and why. You need to sell to leadership to secure support and to have more people join the Wikipedia pages team to help. The bigger the company, the more time you’ll spend selling to others in the organisation. Most PMs would sell to (potential) customers to close deals and to build excitement about the product too.
Evangelist
PMs are the biggest evangelists for their product, both inside and outside the organisation. You need to ensure other teams are aware of our roadmap, align with them and collaborate effectively if need be. For example, you may collaborate with the Wikipedia team responsible for maintaining partnerships with Wikipedia contributors, so you’re building features catered for them as well. Externally, you may make statements or blog posts when you launch new features (example).
Juggler
PMs typically have a lot of work happening in parallel. You may be working on many launches simultaneously. Sometimes, it’s strategic work, coming up with the Wikipedia pages roadmap and vision. Other times, it’s more tactical, collaborating with other teams like Engineering, Design, Marketing or Sales. Context switching is essential because your calendar is normally fully booked from meetings with peers and leads.
Firefighter
PMs put out fires often. These are unexpected events that need your immediate attention. For example, let’s say a media publisher will write an article criticising Wikipedia, you need to urgently make a statement to them to ensure there are no misunderstandings. Another example of a fire may be a critical issue was found in your launch and you need to make a decision quickly on what to do.
An important part of the role isn’t just reacting to fires, but figuring out how to anticipate issues and prepare for them. For example, writing premortems is a good exercise to anticipate what could go wrong, so you can prevent them.
Reviewer
Throughout the product launch process, PMs need to work with many teams, like Engineering, Design, Marketing and Legal. Since you’re accountable for the product’s success, you spend a lot of time reviewing and leaving feedback on other people’s work to maintain a high bar. For example, reviewing new Wikipedia pages user flows with the designer or reviewing marketing materials before a launch. Or, reviewing the current product experiment and flagging feature requests and issues to improve the product.
Cheerleader
PMs should take accountability to develop team culture and try to get the most out of their team. This involves having a positive attitude and making the team feel appreciated. Good PMs also listen to ideas and ambitions from the team, then encourage them to strive toward those ambitions.
Caretaker
PMs, much like caretakers, operate largely behind the scenes, handling the unseen, unglamorous work that keeps the machine running. You’ll clean up the messes, solve problems that others don’t want to solve, and maintain the order necessary for others to perform at their best. For example, doing manual work like reaching out to specific Wikipedia contributors to better understand user behaviour.
Product success
Ultimately, a PM’s success is determined by the success of the product being managed (in this case, success of Wikipedia pages). Quite often, the role is to define what success even means — this can often be complex. For example, success could be business success (more money), user success (more growth), or ecosystem success (delivering high-quality data about topics globally well). What do you care most about? In our Wikipedia Pages example, you’ll likely care most about adoption and engagement.
Although the roles mentioned in this article are responsibilities that PMs typically do, you need to continually proactively reflect to figure out what are the most important things to do to maximise the likelihood of success.