Career as a Product Manager

Ranjan K Baruah *

We use different products for different purposes. Taking online classes by paying is also using online products apart from objects that we use. Different products are launched at different times and they are in the market for the consumers. Product may be anything from daily used items to essential needs.

For any product to be launched well and then sustain in the competitive markets, product management is must and these are carried out by product managers. In today’s edition let us understand about product managers as a career path.

A Product Manager is a professional who identifies consumer needs. They define the objective that a product or a feature will satisfy and encourage the team to transform that vision into a reality based on consumer needs. Product managers play a key role in any organisation as they are responsible for describing the product vision, strategy, and roadmap and also success of the product.

We may understand and get an idea about the jobs related to product management when we look at jobs in different portals like naukri, linkedIn , etc . At present there are more than 20,000 active product manager jobs on job portals.

We should not have confusion with product managers or programme managers as both are different .According to LinkedIn, interest in product management has doubled in the United States in the past 5 years and it has opportunity in India too as we have more consumers and customers in the country due to more population.

The jobs titles or designation related to product management includes Associate Product Manager, Product Manager, Senior Product Manager, Director of Product, VP of Product, Chief Product Officer, etc.

There are other job titles too. Some product organizations have associate and senior product managers. At the same time, others have only a single role with diversified levels of responsibility.

Product management is an organizational function that is tasked with overseeing the development lifecycles of a company’s products. A product manager will identify customer needs, couple the customer’s needs with business goals, present a solution that fits both consumer and business needs, then will oversee the entire development lifecycle of the product.

Product Managers have an intimate understanding of both consumer desires and business goals that, when coupled together, create strong, customer-focused products that help their business thrive.

The term may be new to many but the work and activities may be known to many of us. A graduate or post graduate from management may easily enter into this profession. It seems to be easy but like many other professions it needs skilled people.

One must have all required employability skills to be successful as product managers. Even individuals may work with smaller products to brand those before entering into a bigger corporate or organisation. There are few online courses available especially for the aspirants who are interested to become product managers.