How to be a good product manager

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Product Manager is one of the most versatile roles in any organization. Product Managers have to deal with developers, marketing, legal, finance and designers. Its a role which touches every aspect of the product evolution. The most challenging part of this job is the fact that there are no direct reportees to any product manager. They need to carve a niche for themselves through influence rather than authority. What they need to do is to understand and bring together different lines of thoughts from different teams together to create a single successful product.

This becomes quiet challenging in technology companies. Most of the successful product managers in my experience come from strong technical background. This is important because the most difficult part of their job is to deal with developers. While raising a feature request they need to understand a developers point of view. Its also important for them to be able to relate their technical expertise to gain respect and influence among developers and still be able to appreciate and evaluate the creative and the artistic side of the product.

Any company would want their product managers to have the right product instincts and creative sense. Its not simple to develop product instincts over a day. Although a few people have natural instincts in analyzing products and knowing what would work and what will not, for most of them this is developed over a period of time. You need to analyze the market, understand their needs, and see how products should be developed to meet these needs while generating profit for the company.

While preparing for product managers role, take several good technology products and see what makes a product fail or succeed. Read case studies because that helps you in understanding the market. Try to take failed product for the company you are interviewing for and see why it failed, how it can be improved and what changes you would recommend.

So what attributes make a good product manager.. Below are some of my thoughts

• Needs to have a deep business understanding. 
• Should be able to communicate across multiple departments and multiple levels in a company.
• Very analytical and scrupulous while analyzing product features.
• Deep technical understanding.
• Strong customer focus and marketing acumen.