The product manager’s role is always defined in a fuzzy way in most organizations. Hence though it is understood that the product manager will be responsible for strategy and execution of tasks related to a product business, right from the concept to market phase and then from the cradle to grave phase of the product, the responsibilities vary greatly from one organization to another.
Broadly, the various activities of a product manager in different phases of the product can be summarized as below:
Product Planning phase: In this phase the PM is responsible to define the product, what it will do and why. Hence the PM collects requirements from various channels likes sales and marketing, existing customer feedback, views from potential customers and also competitor analysis. The planning phase is expected to produce a product roadmap and clear contents for various launch/releases with a set of priority for each feature. Moreover, the PM has to prepare a business plan for the product to give a view of the market dynamics and the potential revenues that are expected from this business. An initial licensing structure and pricing is also expected at this phase. This is required for investment approvals from leadership. In short, in this phase the product is planned and its business defined.
Product development phase: Post the approval of investment and a clear agreement with the engineering teams, the product development is initiated. During this phase, the product manager is expected to guide the engineering teams with clarifications about any feature requests and also re-prioritize any specific feature based on specific requirements from customers. Moreover, the acceptance of a feature that has been developed needs to be approved by the product manager.
Marketing phase: While the product is being developed, the product manager needs to align marketing and the supply chain teams to generate orders and to also be able to handle the orders when they arrive. Hence the product manager needs to enable the marketing teams and also produce relevant marketing collaterals that will be used in the field. Moreover, the licenses and orderable items need to be defined and the job to create all orderable SKUs needs to be initiated. Usually a final approval for the pricing is also done during this phase.
Product Launch: Once the product is developed, it is launched to the external world. The sales teams need to be enabled prior to this so that they are able to define the value for each launched product. Further, all external marketing collaterals need to be available and the PM needs to coordinate with any event organizers or promotional agencies to ensure that the product launch is a success.
In -life phase: Post the launch, the objective of a Product manager is maximize the sales of the product. Hence in this phase the product manager needs to coordinate sales support activities along with pre-sales stakeholders. Moreover, the PM needs to support product demonstrations for customers or sales teams to ensure that the product gets required visibility, both internal as well as external so as to maximize sales.
Product Support phase: Once the product goes live for a customer, the PM needs to act as an escalation point for critical customer faults. Moreover, he should also collect feedback from the customers to get requirements for the next launch/release.
End of Life announcement: Once the next release/version of the product has been approved and is in the marketing phase, an end of life declaration for the existing version need to be announced to the customers. Hence the upgrade strategy, migration paths etc. need to be defined.
