Product Management Skills

It likely depends on the type of role you are entering into, the focus and phase of the product. It also will likely depend on whether the company has invested a lot in building out an existing UX team. I am biased because I have built out product design teams and therefore see true value in anyone who is working on product understanding experience fundamentals. If you have the best idea for a product but no one understands how to actually use it and get value, what use is the product to begin with. Instead of coming up with that great idea and then throwing it over the fence to you UX team, it would be better to approach your customer problem roundly and understand what you are hearing fully. 

I'm actually curious if this is widespread, as I've not seen in current or previous Product roles analytical skills being considered more valuable than UX...  While analytical skills are important for looking at customer data in aggregate and prioritizing problems by impact, UX skills help PMs dig into the "why" and "how" our customers think and operate. It's a balance: We don't want PMs that "hide behind the numbers," nor do we want PMs that entirely base roadmaps on a handful of customer interviews / limited qualitative feedback.

I'm a fan of pairing. Often times Engineering works so closely with product, it is easy enough to sit more closely with your product partner and work through problems together. Ask questions and learn while on the job. If and when you get comfortable enough, start to volunteer to take on different tasks. I've worked with engineers who pair with me in writing requirements, buidling out tickets, reviewing designs, conducting user research. With this, you can now speak to first hand experiences and learnings within your existing company or any new ones you may be looking to move into.

Fairly easily potentially, compared to transitioning from other less-related fields. Product Management is as much art as it is discipline or science. Leveraging technical expertise related to the same or adjacent PM area helps. Some job descriptions will even require engineering experience or area of study. One major pitfall to avoid however, is remaining in "engineering mode" as a PM. As PMs, our focus should be on the WHAT, WHO, and the WHY, whereas Eng/Data Science's focus is more on the HOW. While some may disagree, for me all these still fall in the category of Hard skills for PMs. As an engineer transitioning to PM you would need to potentially learn more about setting product vision and strategy, go-to-market strategy, user requirements gathering, writing product requirements docs, and prioritization. You would also need to flex a lot more of you soft skills as a PM: communicating in writting and verbally, synthesizing info, influencing, managing stakehorders, driving collaboration and execution, prioritizing, negotiating, inspiring, etc. This can seem overwhelming. So "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." Ideally, you have the technical experience in the same business domain, and can read up plenty on the discipline of Product Management. You've likely even experienced all this on the receiving end as an engineer. The rest is the art and the soft skills which will come with self-awareness, observation of your own and other's interactions, practice, and even formal training. While you may not be crafting product strategy on day 1, getting as much exposure to frameworks for strategy, and even just listening to others make strategic decisions and trade offs will help you start applying similar frameworks yourself.

I am very much a systems thinker and like to understand the whole. I started my product career focusing on product management but quickly was exposed to the different facets of product management incl product design, engineering and product marketing. I wanted to do a bit of a deep dive in each of these areas so I could better understand how to use them in my craft. So I worked in those spaces, built out teams and best practices around how to do them well. Ultimately, I did that in service of making myself a stronger product/technology leader. I feel that as a product manager, you should be comfortable and aware with product marketing principles and be able to be a strong partner in the space. I'm not sure I ever really chose product management over product marketing. I just incorporated it into my product toolkit.

The two disciplines are very different, despite some intersections on go-to-market, outbound communications, and occasional blurred lines between the roles in some companies regarding strategy and customer requirements. Early on in my career I had the opportunity to simultaneously work in both functions and experience them. Product Management has very broad scope and deals directly with technology. Ultimately, for me, building (or fixing) products felt most rewarding. :)

The biggest mistake I will mention here is not getting stakeholder buy-in. A lot of times we make assumptions about what people want and do not take the time ahead of to understand needs. Speak to those needs and share any constraints. Work to bring alignment across stakeholders. In the end, stakeholders lose trust in the product manager because they do not feel seen or heard. It is important that pre-work is done ahead of time so that when roadmaps are being presented, nothing comes as a surprise.

It seems all too easy to NOT get roadmap buy-in. Sometimes, it can feel like the default answer is always "No" at first, and despite all the work you have done, you are getting sent back to the drawing board. Some things that help, not in any particular order: * Go as wide as possible early on as pre-work to understand stakeholders' motivations and identify any possible opposition * Dig deep to identify the true source of the opposition. Listen a lot, ask questions. Treat this exercise as part of requirements gathering. * Identify dependencies early * Tie roadmap item to financial impact upside * Is the impact estimate credible and defensible * Is the level of effort astronomical, or disproportionate to value * Is there a downside, beyond the lost oportunity of not doing the feature * Tie roadmap to broader strategy * Are you potentially missing technical or other considerations? * Have you been transparent and collaborative? Is anybody going to oppose the roadmap because they were excluded from discussions and decisions * Get exec buy-in in smaller forums, early, even at the conceptual level * Build a coalition of active supporters - there is safety in numbers * Assume positive intent * Seek to educate not sell * Seek common ground * Consider earlier conversations as setting the stage and foundation for later decisions. Aim to first not get a "no", rather than pushing for an immediate "yes" * Give yourself enough time to work iteratively through to buy-in.

1. Ability to communicate well - Someone told me early in my career: The single most important PM skill he looks for when hiring a PM is communication. Communication is really a proxy for building trust, driving alignment, having healthy debates when there’s conflict and committing to a path forward. That’s all under the hood of good communication, and is instrumental in driving product teams forward. 2. Data driven mindset - relevant to qual as much as to quant. Ask yourself and teams the right questions. Become familiar with qualitative research tools, understand what your dashboards need to look like, and get your dashboards in place. Be empowered to make data-driven decisions. 3. Ruthlessly prioritize - every day you have more you want to do than you will have time to do it. That’s just the reality. Every human has 24 hours, and one can’t change that. Make sure you prioritize your team and the team's time and resources.

Answered an above question about hard skills. I don't think its generally necessary for PMs to read code but I do think it is important for you to understand the concept/principles. An overview would be very helpful in making you a good partner to your other more technical peers. It also helps when talking through any blockers or considerations to keep in mind.

1. Understand what about product management is interesting to you 2. Research roles and opportunities that speak to what you find interesting 3. Identify the gaps in your skills or experience  4. Fill those gaps :) Take a course, read, volunteer to build something. 5. Network and build a group of people who can help advocate on your behalf when roles come up in their companies 6. Start the application process 7. Develop relationships with recruiters or hiring managers

The hard skills that come to mind for me are: 1. Technical - This is going to vary depending on the type of career you want to have and the company you want to work for. Generally, it is important for you to have an understanding of technical development principles and vocabulary. You want to be a strong partner to your peers and competitively, this will put you ahead of others.  2. Analytical - Data is an important part of the product management journey. Someone said "If you care about it, measure it" and its very true. Data is critical to helping you understand how to build your roadmap, see your threats and opportunities and competitive performance. You will want to feel verse in the tools that help you measure and what they are telling you.  3. Business skills - As a PM, you have to understand the product AND the business behind it. You need to speak to revenue and profit, budgeting, forecasting, etc. The ability to have these conversations with company leaders is critical. 4. Industry knowledge - When working on product, you need to understand the landscape in which you are competing. You are tracking key market trends for your project and constnatly reporting on that.  5. Strategic Thinking - You need to be able to make and anticipate paths based on your industry knowledge and business understanding. You'll have to consider company goals and determine what is the best way to get there. 6. Ruthless Prioritization + Decision Making - In product, you will always have too many options. You will have to pick a path and fairly quickly. You will need to understand what things get you to goal quickest. 

There is definitely a fine line here. Every decision cannot be data driven and will likely be informed to some extent BUT part of the excitment of product management is leaning on that intuition. In some cases, you will have data to back up your assumptions and in others you will not. Every situation is going to be different and you'll have to become an educated risk taker. Leaning on previous experiences or patterns you've seen somewhere else.

It's hard for me to think anyone is 'doomed' per se but I would make this a focus area if you are truly trying to get into product management. Making smart decisions quickly is a strong product management trait and so to be successful, you will need to be comforatble doing that. I would probably reverse the lens and ask yourself if you would be happy making smart decisions quickly everyday. Does that excite you? If so, then dive into why you can't or don't want to currently. If it is not exciting, consider what you like about product management and see if you can get that same joy in another role.