Product Manager Tasks: What have Product Managers to do?

What are the product manager tasks? Why and when need things to be done? What have Product Managers to do?

Most product managers have previously worked in engineering, marketing or sales. One day they suddenly become a product manager in their company because nobody else is there.
If companies are very technically oriented, the product management tasks are usually called user stories, requirements and technical specifications. In those where sales and marketing are pronounced, market statements and sales support are often mentioned.
Discussions with managing directors, on the other hand, often show a lack of confidence in product management because the information that management needs for decisions is inadequately delivered in both cases. Thus, management does not have a sufficient basis on which to decide on investments and long-term strategies.
In the end it always leads to product management being completely dense with operational and tactical tasks, having no time, being quite dissatisfied with one's own situation and one's own job.

But why doesn't anyone in a company really know the tasks of product managers?
As we noticed at the beginning, almost all product managers come from other departments, but nobody had a real product management training in which is explained what, when and how to do.
Nurses, bricklayers, policemen, all receive trainings and everyone knows what his tasks are and what he has to do when.
The work of a product managers has a considerable influence on company decisions amounting to hundreds of thousands or even millions of euros. Everything without training and with the missing knowledge of the task.

Therefore product managers are trained in our Product Management seminars, learn with the help of the Open Product Management Workflow™ as well as its tools, what the product manager tasks are and how these are to be completed professionally. In addition, they learn what the goal of the individual work steps is, how they are related, and how they provide fact-based decision templates for management and all other departments.

Define & complete Product Management tasks with the
help of Open Product Management Workflow™

In order to be able to explain the tasks of product managers more simply, we use the Open Product Management Workflow™ to help. By the way, the  Workflow was developed by us because in our practical work with product managers in companies we have experienced time and again that our colleagues always find it difficult to perform tasks and work in the correct order precisely at this point

Let's take a look at the workflow. At first glance, many boxes are noticeable which contain the individual product management tasks. These task boxes are divided into three colors. Each color stands for a task section that simultaneously describes the activity and role of the respective product manager.

The blue section contains all strategic, innovative and business tasks of product management. For this reason, this section or activity is also referred to „Strategic Product Management“.
The goal of all product management tasks in this section is to help derive market-based strategies and create decision templates.
Everything that is done in this strategic section also creates the basis for all other activities and sections such as Technical Product Management and Go-To-Market.

The time that the product management invests in the tasks of the strategic part reduces the wasted time for tactics.

As a product manager, you start where you get the most information, at the customer. The task is now to find out which problem costs the customer time and/or money and whether he is willing to pay money to solve this problem.
A balanced relationship between the company's own customers, the customers of the competition and the potential customers has to be found.
For easier orientation, the individual tasks in Open Product Management Workflow™ were grouped into phases again - see bottom bar.

Thus, the phase interview is always followed by the phase of identifying the problem, persona and scenario. This is followed by the analysis phase, which is important for the subsequent derivation of the individual strategies.
The phase check helps to determine business success with the help of key performance indicators and to check the type and value of innovations. The phase check also helps to answer the questions Build, Buy or Parnter?, i.e. develop yourself, buy or partner. Buy, Build or Partner does not only refer to technology, but can also affect decisions regarding markets, sales channels and communication channels.
From all information, which resulted from these product management tasks, one can derive now all strategies.
The last step in strategic product management is the consolidation phase, i.e. the summary of results and derivations in the form of a business plan with calculated figures, the business case.
To ensure that only market facts that can be continuously and dynamically adapted are consolidated in the business plan, product managers receive templates and tools in our Product Management courses the "Agile Business Plan™ " developed by us. With these templates and tools, it is possible to execute each individual product management task in such a way that the results lead to a fact-based decision template.