Product management is about:
- Create focus,
- translate it into something that’s actionable for a lot of different collaborators.
A good product is an intersection of 3 elements:
- Desirability: users want.
- Feasibility: we can build it.
- Viability: financially possible.
PM will start with desirability, then translate it into feasibility and viability.
To create desirability, you need to go to the customer and create a testable focus around who that customer is, and what’s really important to them.
Then, you work to translate that focus into something that’s actionable across these different areas.
If you don’t do that, you can feel like you are too busy all the time, because you forget what is the most important things, which are things you should focus on.
How to check whether you are suitable to become a PM?
If you are not interested in how products are made, then NO.
If you are super interested in this, then maybe engineering (the feasibility dimension) is a better fit.
If you are not interested in users and their behaviors, then NO.
If you are super interested in this, then maybe user experience designer (the desirability dimension) is a better fit.
If you just want a simple view of what’s your to do list, and what’s your definition of success, then NO.
But if you are curious about these things and how all these things come together, and you are comfortable taking ambiguity and formulating it into testable focus, then YES, and you may enjoy this job a lot.