AMA: GitLab Director of Product Management, Jacqueline Porter on Product Management Skills

As with most things - the answer really depends! Although, I have found that being a product manager boils down to 4 main skills: 1. Customer empathy 2. Setting expectations 3. Growth mindset 4. Action bias In many cases, deeply understanding the customer's problems and needs helps you build the proper technical acumen over time. Market sizing, competitive analysis, prioritization, and opportunity assessments can have a spectrum of accountability by role in different organizations. TL;DR - soft skills offer a strong foundation for success as a PM and many of the "hard skills" can be owned by different teams.

Product managers are ambitious, goal-oriented, and passionate people (generally). When managing, growing, and retaining these types of individuals I like to keep in mind the following: * Tie personal goals to business goals * Identify side projects to help create opportunities for future growth * Revisit long-term career aspirations every 12 weeks and see what they are doing to get skills toward that * Connect them to people that will help them grow skills that they want to grow in Approaching each PM as an individual with a unique set of needs for growth helps them stay invested in the company, their role, and builds trust with me as their leader/coach.

Product management is not a field that someone usually formally studies for and gets into. This is typically a field where someone gains domain expertise and transitions into the product role to represent the customer and value for a business. Transitioning from any role into another role usually means having translatable skills. Between engineering and product there is a lot of context that is shared: * Processes for building software * User expectations and behaviors when interacting with software products * How a software company works As a result, ramping into a product role may mean getting familiar with the business side, and customer value, and building the muscle of deeply understanding the problems the customer is trying to solve. A starting point could be joining customer interviews and then gradually writing product specs. Finally, creating new product opportunity canvases for the business to review. It starts with deeply understanding the customer's needs!

The most memorable product manager candidates have a track record of * delivering customer value * proactively thinking about problems * a growth mindset In reflection, be prepared to represent your best outcomes and results. Also, show how you want to keep reaching for more. Ambition is impressive in a PM - personally and for the company results. Anticipating risking and edge cases is a great signal that the PM is proactive in planning as well.

Product managers are important for a number of reasons: 1. Prioritization to ensure business deliverables are done in the highest value order possible 2. A single point of reference for the business to make trade-offs 3. Consistency of customer voice in the product portfolio Decision making is not always the task at hand. Sometimes the Product Manager needs to assemble the right people, SMEs, customer context, market information, and present that to the business leaders for a decision. Then the product manager can take action accordingly. Short answer, no - PMs who have a hard making decisions aren't doomed! Although, it is a good idea to find ways to get out of indecision loops and find opportunities to resolve things quickly.