Product Management: Installment 3 of 5

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Product Management: Installment 3 of 5

Last week, we hit the ground running in the first two installments of our five-part product management blog.  We looked at the first three qualities that every successful product manager must have.  Today, we’ll take a peek at qualities 4 through 6.

Insight to Success #4: Strategically Driven, Tactically Innovative

A product manager’s strategy has to be grounded in corporate philosophy.  What does that mean?  It means not going beyond the boundaries of what your company stands for, believes in, or has stood by in the past just to move a product to market.  Instead, translate existing corporate strategy into an effective policy that guides product development.  This will also mean utilizing that strategy to manage each and every aspect of the product life cycle (yes, from cradle to grave, as they say).  Remember that, above all, the customer’s needs come first, so make sure that you’re achieving product development through a timely process that the consumer can come to expect.

Best Practices, Tools & Processes

  • Use the Product Innovation Charter (PIC) that we discussed last week
  • Utilize Product Life-Cycle Management (PLC)
  • Process and Project Management

 

Insight to Success #5: Efficient, Multi-Tasking, Sense of Urgency

Efficiency is a critical aspect to product management, because you have to tailor and simplify your processes/tasks to meet the needs of both the business and your consumers.  Like any project manager (remember the olive), the product manager must be able to multi-task.  There are never enough resources available to you, and so managing a business and a product requires a depth of understanding that must encompass the key areas of the business.  It’s critical that you instill a sense of urgency, contingency planning, and parallel development in the team, your peers, and upper management.

Best Practices, Tools & Processes

  • Team leadership skills—make sure to read, “Why Teams Don’t Work” (yep, it’s even written by Axiom’s Harvey Robbins)
  • Effective hiring of multi-talented professionals
  • Microsoft Scheduling: Create short (30 days), mid (6-month), and long term (one year or longer) goals and instill a communication process to report progress to team members and management

 

Insight to Success #6: Prioritize, Motivate, Delegate

Reprioritization is key to any fluid and flexible product management process.  You have to be willing and able to shuffle priorities based on the needs of the business, the market, the product, and the resources.  Make sure to motivate your team with communication, proper planning, anticipation, and translation (and be sure to individualize everything so that people feel valued).  Finally, delegate tasks in order to optimize employee involvement and ownership over what the company is creating.

Best Practices, Tools & Processes

  • Screening tools from idea to project prioritization objectively benchmarked in reality
  • Implement leadership training with a focus on understanding personality types and learn how to effectively deal with each type
  • Learn to delegate!

Thanks for reading!  Check back next week as Part 4 launches, featuring detailed advice and best practices on goals 7-9. And if you’re interested in learning more or need training in product management, contact rbeachy@axiomcom.com.

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