Constantly staying cutting edge is the only thing one of these dudes needs to focus on as they are running from one piece of the massive project puzzle to the next. From product development to message seeding, team management to strategy maintenance, corporate needs to front line execution. Today’s product managers need to possess a wide range of skills to be successful in a rapidly evolving technology landscape. And, it has been increasingly important for them to bridge the customer’s needs with the product that is being engineered, while defining the go-to-market strategy in a landscape that spans dozens of channels. Turning customer requirements into a product roadmap is not a revolutionary idea. Nevertheless, it’s hard to find individuals who can effectively communicate product value, quickly become a subject matter expert in the business, AND speak the language of engineers.
Why not reevaluate the job requirements of our product managers to cope with the pressures of a new world? Have one person who can master the full gamut of tasks from product inception to product delivery.
Introducing the Product Management Rockstar!
He’s overseeing the product’s developmental lifecycle while he’s seeding the market with compelling messages of the product’s arrival; he’s training and creating materials for sales teams; he’s approving ad copy and overseeing the PR, social media, and analyst relations strategies; he’s working with demand generation teams and generally making everything about that product, and its success, his top priority.
Combining the product manager and marketer removes friction from the product development, marketing, and sales cycle.
Years ago, start-ups had to hire one person to do both jobs out of necessity (budget constraints and all that), but it quickly became apparent that this new type of product manager thrived. This newfound efficiency allowed them to iterate quickly during the development cycle and launch products to the market with speed and agility.
Here is a list of things that Rockstar should be doing:
Technical Requirements
- Analyze market and customer needs
- Define product requirements
- Create user interface mock-ups
- Understand technical details around integrations with third-party systems
- Understand enough about technology, programming languages, databases, and system architecture to know why technologies are leveraged
- Work in lock-step with engineering as products are being built.
Marketing Requirements
- Analyze market needs and define value proposition and key positioning
- Create/write product collateral, white papers, presentations
- Work in lock-step with sales and provide sales tools and sales support
- Act as liaison to creative, press relations, analyst relations teams
- Help drive demand for products
- Work with events teams on content and provide support at trade shows
It will be vastly more efficient for technology companies to hire a few rock stars to fill their product management positions and staff assistants under them. Allow that one person to own strategy and development start-to-finish, and I guarantee you will see the impact on your bottom line. By removing friction from the equation, you’ll make the development, marketing, and management processes faster and get products to your consumers faster—products they’ll love.