Types of product managers

Technical Product Managers:
Strong tech background. Focus on technology-based products. Need a thorough understanding of how the technology is developed.

Strategic Product Managers:
Strong business background. Focus on products where the business strategy is core to success. Need to understand the pros and cons of various business strategies.

Growth Product Managers:
Expertise in how to grow an existing product. Focus on how to get more customers using an existing product.

The Product-Development Life Cycle

5 key stages:
1. What is the problem? (Finding and Planning)
2. How to solve it? (Designing)
3. How best to build the solution? (Building)
4. How to deliver the solution? (Sharing)
5. Did the solution solve the problem? (Assessing)

1. Finding and Planning

• What should we build next?
• Requires consideration of a broad set of possible opportunities to pursue.
• Influenced by teams from engineering, design, analytics, and marketing.

Requires you to strategically understand your company:

• Target customer?
• • Now
  • Future
• Company expertise?
• • Existing
  • Desired
• Competitive landscape?

What do you believe is the best opportunity to work on next?

• Fixing a problem with an exisiting product?
• Adding a feature to an existing product?
• Developing a new version of an existing product?
• Creating an entirely new product?