What is Product Management

My last post was about my new assignment as the Product Management of our All In One (AIO) SAP Solutions and I had described what AIO was at Emergys Corp. Today I thought I'd elaborate on what I view Product Management to be and the responsibilities that I now have.

As I was in discussions with my bosses (we all have many these days, right?) about Product Management, I had begun to do some research on exactly what I was signing up for. Coincidently, a customer of ours was asking similar questions, so the research I had undertaken actually was used in a presentation to them.

My sources included:

http://www.sequentlearning.com/
"The Product Manager’s Desk Reference" by Steven Haines
http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/survey/2009


"Characteristics"

The bottom line is, as the Product Manager, YOU own the product. It is your responsibility to help this "baby" grow! How do I do that?

Well, let's start with the characteristics of a Product Manager.

1. Personal Skills - this is about you (or me in my case). I need to develop the skills of being entrepreneurial, learn to network with peers/groups, be passionate about your product (it's your baby, after all!) Be able to answer the questions about what should happen now and what should happen next.
   
2. Business Skills - detect opportunities, work with your customers/marketing to identify trends, drive business cases, don't loose sight of P&L
3. Team Building Skills - be a talent manager, develop human capital in your team, help them grow their skills, see your baby as their baby, align them with your drive to help your product succeed

So what do you think? Do you have all of those skills? If you're like me, you have some of them in various shades of ability and much to develop and improve on ... but that's what's so exciting about new assignments!

In my next post I'll elaborate on more of the day to day stuff.

Thanks for reading....