Business Manager Skills Required
Business Manager Skills Required – You have heard a lot about the need for soft skills in product management However, any discussion of product manager soft skills should assume that you know the specific skills required for the job: hard skills. But what are the hard skills required in product management?
In this post, we’ll discuss some of the hard skills that we believe product managers need to develop. But first, let’s clarify the difference between soft skills and hard skills for product managers Ashok Bania, director of product management for popular meditation app Headspace, recently shared his definition with both of us.
Business Manager Skills Required
“Hard skills are related to your role and the work you do. They are your technical skills. For example, if you are a data engineer, hard skills represent how much you know about data, how much you know about models. You know, how much? You know about statistics etc. Soft skills, however, are not directly related to your work. Soft skills can help you in any job and also in your personal life. Things like communication, time management and focus. – Ashok Bania, Director of Product Management, Headspace
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So what are the hard skills that product managers need? We’ve compiled a list of 5 essential hard skills that all product managers must master.
You don’t need a degree in business or finance to become a product manager (although that doesn’t hurt.) But, you do need some fluency in business basics.
For example, you should know the difference between income and revenue, budgeting, cash flow, and how to read a profit and loss (P&L) statement.
As a product manager, your role requires you to know the details of your product development Part of this is monitoring other factors within your company that may affect development Additionally, let’s say a stakeholder asks you to discuss revenue for specific products over a specific time period or to provide your forecast for future revenue. You must know how to read, interpret and disclose these details in that situation By doing this, you will not only add more value to the organization you work for, but you will also be more connected to people in your company who may be interested in your future products and ideas.
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Product management is a meaningful discipline There are so many ways to develop a product, it can seem overwhelming to get started
One of the most important skills in product management is (surprise!) a basic knowledge of best merchandising practices. It is recommended that product managers know about various frameworks, processes and methodologies Many product managers conduct research, develop strategy, communicate plans, coordinate development, and work on feedback and data analysis. Fortunately, smart product managers have done this before you and coded it into various product management strategies.
Understanding the different product management frameworks is a good place to start We outline the top frameworks to make you a better product manager in our general guide to product management frameworks. Explore some of the frameworks on this list, learning different strategies that can be used to research product ideas, acquire new customers, delight existing users, and more.
One of the best tools for a product manager is the product roadmap Specific roadmapping software can be a powerful tool in a product manager’s toolbox This tool allows a product manager to quickly organize complex ideas Mastering this tool is essential for product managers to plan, communicate plans effectively with various stakeholders, and coordinate development.
Key Hard Skills In Product Management
In our webinar, Essential Skills All Product Managers Must Master, panelist Isabelle Berner, Senior Product Manager at Pivotal Labs, said that prioritizing is one of the key responsibilities of a product manager. is
It is important to ensure that engineers are working on the most important things But as Isabelle explains, that means “a lot of our work is saying no…
Knowing how to prioritize and politely decline requests that interfere with your product’s strategic priorities. And yes, it probably covers a gray area between hard and soft skills The webinar panel was torn on how to categorize it
The objective prioritization framework helps with many prioritization decisions And a working knowledge of these frameworks and when and how to use them is an important product management skill But we believe that mastering this skill is important enough for a product manager to be on this list of hard skills for product management, especially because you can apply it to science.
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As we’ve pointed out many times here, your product roadmap decisions should be data-driven, not based entirely on your intuition (no matter how good that intuition is). Data helps product managers become aware of market opportunities or threats It can guide them to the right place to focus development resources, and it can help them validate product and feature concepts before devoting resources.
“Data can catch you off guard. You can do your research and think, ‘Now I have all the data points; I’ve told my story and made my business case.’ But when you present it to someone who has more data knowledge than you, they can easily get through your plan
Like Kevin, we believe that acquiring skills in metrics, analytics, and research represents a critical skill that every product manager must develop.
You don’t need a degree in economics to become a product manager (although that degree wouldn’t hurt either), but you should at least have a basic level of understanding of the discipline.
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Think of it this way: Economics studies how people and societies deal with scarce resources with alternative uses. As product managers, we almost always have some form of this problem We had a lot of requests for our team to manage, a planned launch date that didn’t leave us enough time, or enough budget to hire the staff we needed.
Having a basic understanding of economics goes a long way toward understanding the concepts you will use every day in this career. These concepts may include trade-offs, cost vs. benefit analysis, future consequences of current actions (think technical debt!), and more.
This is a big question from our panel We’ve covered this on the blog before: Do Product Managers Need to Be Mechanical? In other words, should a product manager working on a technical product come from a technical background such as engineering, as Ashok Bania does at Headspace?
Director of Product Annie Dunham points out some situations where career experience in the technical field can help product managers. For example, if you manage products designed for technical users, such as engineers, a technical background can give you empathy and a deep understanding of users.
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But Annie, who also has a technical background, says there are situations where an engineering background can be a disadvantage for an engineer-turned-product manager. “I have technical conversations that take a lot of time,” he said. This means that technical product managers run the risk of putting on their engineering hats and losing focus on the big picture strategic issues that they should be focusing on as product managers.
So the answer, we believe, is to strengthen your technical muscles – learn to code, take online courses in the technical field in your field – so you develop a deeper understanding of your product, users and your technical partners. Can This is a hard skill to develop, and you don’t have to start out and get an engineering degree (unless you want to, because it can be useful).
Soft or intangible product management skills, such as working comfortably with others or excellent listening skills, can help in a product manager career. Recently, we reported that the #1 skills product says their peers lack priority skills. Priority skills sit between hard and soft skills
Watch our webinar, Hiring and Developing a Successful Product Team, to learn more about the skills product leaders look for when hiring:
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You also want to master at least a few hard product management skills This typically includes research skills, understanding how the business works, and general knowledge of product management best practices. Once you have a solid foundation of hard product management skills, you can start focusing on developing your soft skills to become a better product manager.
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