5 Core Skills Every Aspiring Product Manager Needs To Succeed
Product managers need to be customer-obsessed and have a combination of technical and leadership … [+]
To successfully launch disruptive products that meet the requirements of stakeholders and customers, product managers must have a well-rounded, multi-faceted skill set. This entails a balance of technical product-specific skills, and soft skills that enable you to work well with development teams, manage their collaboration, and convey and deliver the product vision.
Below are five core skills you need to develop to be an outstanding product manager:
Customer-Centric Attitude
You cannot create a successful product without understanding your target market’s needs, preferences, and use cases. Having a customer-centered approach is fundamental to ensuring your product aligns with market trends and demands, and that it stands out in the competition to obtain customer loyalty. This also mitigates the risk of product failure, as you will have a more in-depth understanding of customer requirements to make it widely accepted by the market.
To do this effectively, take time to build your communication and networking skills so that you can develop relationships with key players in your industry and understand their needs.
Analytical Skills
A key aspect of having a customer-centric attitude is one’s ability to sort through data, evaluate, and come to conclusions that help make informed decisions according to the insights gained about your market. You can sharpen your analytical skills through undertaking data analytics courses, such as Google’s
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Strategy Skills
Strategic planning is an essential skill you need as part of your product management toolkit. When you think strategically, you will be able to plan ahead for risk mitigation, optimize and allocate resources effectively, motivate your product development team towards tangible goals, and ensure your product aligns with the overarching organizational strategy. This skill will also help you build confidence with investors, stakeholders, clients, and senior management.
To build strategy skills, get into the practice of asking strategic questions to help you set meaningful goals at work and in your personal life, such as, “Where are we now?” “Where do we want to be?” and “What do we need to do to get from here to where we want to be?”
Leadership Skills
“Leadership skills” is an umbrella term for a range of skills that include organization, people management and motivation, planning, relationship-building and collaboration, budget management, critical thinking, and decision making. These are all skills that you’ll need various doses of throughout your career as a product manager. You can develop your leadership skills through undertaking leadership training courses, getting the assistance of a leadership coach, asking your employer for guidance and challenging projects, and reading leadership books or listening to related podcasts.
Technical Expertise
Although not absolutely necessary in all cases, having a solid foundation of technical skills relevant to your product will boost your career opportunities and help you stand out as a product manager. Some core technical skills required for product managers include SDLC (knowledge of the software development lifecycle), SQL for data visualization, and familiarity with prototyping software.
Identify your areas of improvement in relation to these skills, and seek to strengthen them by … [+]
These five technical and non-technical skills will help you progress in your product management career journey, be effective in your role, and ensure your deliver a product that meets and exceeds expectations and stands out in a competitive market.
