What makes a product manager successful?
Abdul Saleem Mohammad1*, Nuha Rasheed2, Hajera Hafeez3, Mohammed Nayeem Uddin4
1Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis and Quality Assurance, Nizam Institute of Pharmacy, Deshmukhi (V), Pochampally (M), Behind Mount Opera, Yadadri Bhuvanagiri (Dist)-508284, Telangana, India.
2Department of Pharmaceutics, Nizam Institute of Pharmacy, Deshmukhi (V), Pochampally (M), Behind Mount Opera, Yadadri Bhuvanagiri (Dist)-508284, Telangana, India.
3Department of Pharmaceutics, Global College of Pharmacy, Beside to Moinabad Police Station, Moinabad, Rangareddi (Dist)-501504, Telangana, India.
4Department of Pharmacology, Nizam Institute of Pharmacy,
Deshmukhi (V), Pochampally (M), Behind Mount Opera, Yadadri Bhuvanagiri (Dist)-508284, Telangana, India.
*Corresponding Author E-mail:
ABSTRACT:
Generally, a product manager manages one or more tangible products. However, the term may be used to describe a person who manages intangible products, such as music, information, and services. A product manager's role in tangible goods industries is similar to a program director's role in service industries. Diverse interpretations regarding the role of the product manager are the norm. The product manager title is often used in many ways to describe drastically different duties and responsibilities. Even within the high-tech industry where product management is better defined, the product manager's job description varies widely among companies. This is due to tradition and intuitive interpretations by different individuals. A product manager communicates product vision from the highest levels of executive leadership to development and implementation teams. The product manager is often called the product "CEO". The product manager investigates, selects, and drives the development of products for an organization, performing the activities of product management. A product manager considers numerous factors such as intended demographic, the products offered by the competition, and how well the product fits with the company's business model. The product manager is often considered the CEO of the product and is responsible for the strategy, roadmap, and feature definition for that product or product line. The position may also include marketing, forecasting, and profit and loss (P&L) responsibilities.
KEY WORDS: CEO, manager, product, executive, responsibilities, industry.
INTRODUCTION:
Project Manger:
A project manager is the person responsible for accomplishing the project objectives. Key project management responsibilities include
1) Defining and communicating project objectives that are clear, useful and attainable.
2) Procuring the project requirements like workforce, required information, various agreements and material or technology needed to accomplish project objectives.
3) Managing the constraints of the project management triangle, which are cost, time, scope and quality.
In the financial services industry (banking, insurance etc.), product managers manage products (for example, credit card portfolios), their profit and loss, and also determine the business development strategy.
In some companies, the product manager also acts as a:
1) Product marketing manager: may perform all outbound marketing activities in the older sense of the term
2) Project manager: may perform all activities related to schedule and resource management
3) Program manager: may perform activities related to schedule, resource, and cross-functional execution
4) Product owner: a popular role in Agile development methodology, may perform all activities related to a self-encapsulated feature or feature set plan, development and releases.
5) Technical product manager: similar to product owner, but may perform all activities from technology perspective.
6) Product designer: closer to UX designer but more focus on entire function flows. [1]
These skills include:
1 Be Transparent About Your Prioritization and Roadmap Process
2 Be Able to Say “No,” But Explain Why in Terms That Stakeholders Understand
Responsibilities:
The Project Manager is accountable for ensuring that everyone on the team knows and executes his or her role, feels empowered and supported in the role, knows the roles of the other team members and acts upon the belief that those roles will be performed. The specific responsibilities of the Project Manager may vary depending on the industry, the company size, the company maturity, and the company culture. However, there are some responsibilities that are common to all Project Managers, noting:
1) Developing the project plans
2) Managing the project stakeholders
3) Managing communication
4) Managing the project team
5) Managing the project risk
6) Managing the project schedule
7) Managing the project budget
8) Managing the project conflicts
9) Managing the project delivery
Roles and Responsibilities:
The role of the project manager encompasses many activities including:
1) Planning and Defining Scope
2) Activity Planning and Sequencing
3) Resource Planning
4) Developing Schedules
5) Time Estimating
6) Cost Estimating
7) Developing a Budget
8) Documentation
9) Creating Charts and Schedules
10) Risk Analysis
11) Managing Risks and Issues
12) Monitoring and Reporting Progress
13) Team Leadership
14) Strategic Influencing
15) Business Partnering
16) Working with Vendors
17) Scalability, Interoperability and Portability Analysis
18) Controlling Quality
19) Benefits Realisation
Finally, senior management must give a project manager support and authority if he or she is going to be successful. [2]
Why You Need a Project Management Office:
"The more experienced project managers understand that if you don't get the people side of project management, it doesn't matter how good your methodology or your tools are," says Kondo. "If you're not managing your users, sponsor or stakeholders, you could deliver on budget, but you might not meet their needs, and they'll say they're not satisfied."
A good project manager possesses many and varied skills. Skills, in this case, defines the professional human personality of an individual. A successful project manager must possess the following traits:
1) Personal traits
2) Technical traits
3) Management traits
4) Coping traits
5) Communication traits
A project manager should have a clear understanding of the various professional aspects of successfully running a project. On a business aspect, a project manager must possess the critical expertise skills that touch in areas of finance, communication, organization and human resource. There exist outlined management topics that every project manager must learn to manage projects effectively. Project managers use these topics for training. They include:
1) Project planning
2) Project initiation
3) Project organization
4) Project management’ software tools
5) Accurate estimates and cost control
6) Problem management [3]
Project Management key topics:
1) To specify the reason why a project is important
2) To specify the quality of the deliverables
3) Resource estimate
4) Timescale
5) Investment, corporate agreement and funding
6) Implementation of management plan on to the project
7) Team building and motivation
8) Risk assessments and change in the project
9) Monitoring
10) Stakeholder management
11) Provider management
12) Closing the project.
Self assurance of a product manager:
1 Ensure that you have full project details before starting.
2 Have the right (and right-sized) project management team in place.
3 Set expectations -- and milestones -- up front.
4 Be clear about who is responsible for what -- and deadlines.
5 Don't micromanage.
6 Make sure you have a good system in place for managing the project, one that everyone can and will use.
7 Keep team members motivated by rewarding them when milestones are reached.
8 Hold regular project status meetings or calls, but keep them short
9 Build in time for changes.
General skills of a product manager to be successful in his tasks: [4]
1 Ensure that you have full project detail up front
2 Set realistic expectations
3 Establish measurable and reportable criteria for success
4 Select team members, and assign responsibilities carefully
5 Embrace your role as leader
6 Manage project risks
7 Evaluate the project when complete
List of plans for a successful product manager
Four key planning points:
1. Do the right project.
2. Define scope clearly and precisely.
3. Plan the whole project. Make a plan for each of the nine areas.
4. Do good architecture.
Prepare your team in just two steps:
5. Get the right team.
6. Get the expertise you need.
Cover all the bases with the nine knowledge areas:
7. Scope.
8. Time and cost.
9. Focus on Quality.
10. Risk.
11. Human Resources.
12. Procurement.
13. Communications.
14. Integration.
Keep the project on track with stages and gates:
15. Use a life cycle.
16. Every gate is a real evaluation.
Use feedback with your team and focus on scope and quality in the doing stage:
17. Use feedback at all four levels.
18. Focus on scope and quality. Get it all done, and get each piece done right.
Follow through to success:
19. Deliver customer delight.
20. Remember ROI and lessons learned.
Five Ways to Project Disaster:
Success is a matter of moving ahead and steering clear of failure. Here are five fast tracks to failure, so that you can avoid them.
Five ways to get it done wrong, or not at all!
1. Scope-less is hopeless. Don’t decide what you are doing—just throw money at a problem.
2. Focus on time and cost, not quality.
3. Know the right thing to do. Don’t analyze problems. Don’t listen to experts.
4. Don’t thank the team, push them harder.
5. Avoid big problems.
What makes a product manager success and the Secrets of Successful Project Management:
Laying the Groundwork:
1 Define project success criteria.
2 Identify project drivers, constraints, and degrees of freedom.
3 Define product release criteria.
4 Negotiate commitments.
Planning the Work:
5 Write a plan.
6 Decompose tasks to inch-pebble granularity. Inch-pebbles are miniature milestones.
7 Develop planning worksheets for common large tasks.
8 Plan to do rework after a quality control activity.
9 Plan time for process improvement.
10 Manage project risks.
Estimating the Project:
11 Estimate based on effort, not calendar time.
12 Don’t schedule people for more than 80%of their time.
13 Build training time into the schedule.
14 Record estimates and how you derived them.
15 Use estimation tools.
16 Respect the learning curve.
17 Plan contingency buffers.
Tracking Your Progress:
18 Record actuals and estimates.
19 Count tasks as complete only when they’re 100% complete.
20 Track project status openly and honestly.
So what soft skills are necessary to become a top-notch project manager? Kondo's firm analyzed the skill sets of both its own best project managers and those of its clients and came up with the following six attributes.
1 They possess the gift of foresight.
2 They're organized.
3 They know how to lead.
4 They're good communicators.
5 They're pragmatic.
6 They're empathetic.
Here are the top 10 traits of project managers who are really making ideas happen:
1 Command authority naturally.
2 Possess quick sifting abilities, knowing what to note and what to ignore.
3 Set, observe, and re-evaluate project priorities frequently.
4 Ask good questions and listen to stakeholders.
5 Do not use information as a weapon or a means of control.
6 Adhere to predictable communication schedules
7 Possess domain expertise in project management as applied to a particular field.
8 Exercise independent and fair consensus-building skills when conflict arises.
9 Cultivate and rely on extensive informal networks inside and outside the firm to solve problems that arise.
10 Look forward to going to work!
Desirable features of a realistic product manager to be successful:
1) Take full responsibility for results.
2) Have zero tolerance for indecisiveness.
3) Always pick up the slack.
4) Love Structure.
Expect immediate action from your team.
Successful project managers have a change management process that they follow. Following defined steps makes it easier to turn any action into a habit because it’s structured and repetitive.
The change management process looks like this:
1) Receive information about the change
2) Assess the change
3) Establish how much work it would be to do the change
4) Prepare a recommendation about whether it is worth going ahead.
1 Be Agile
2 Do Not Micromanage
3 Keep Improving Your Project Management Practice
4 Ongoing Planning
5 Work with a Sense of Urgency
6 Visualise and Communicate all Project Deliverables and Activities
7 Complete Deliverables Step-by-Step
8 Healthy Risk Management
Assign a risk officer who will be responsible for detecting potential project issues. You want someone who has a healthy dose of skepticism:
1) All team members should not hesitate to report concerns or challenges.
2) Maintain a live project risk database that tracks all issues and resolutions.
3) Do not obsess. Assessing risks should not be your main priority. The last thing you want is to be wasting your time and resources on risk management, as it will prevent you from ever completing a project, let alone give you the courage to start it. Remember, you want a healthy dose of risk management, not a crippling one.[5]
9. Open Communication
10. Never Lose Sight of the 3-Factors: Time, Budget, and Quality
CONCLUSION:
While project management practices have changed to be more flexible and open, the foundation remains the same. Project success occurs when it is delivered on time, within budget, with a level of deliverables that are satisfactory to the client. The project manager's main role is to keep all team members aware of these big three - Time, Budget and Quality. Hence, to attain the level of a successful product manager, the manager is supposed to fulfill with all the qualifications, values, responsibilities, qualities, rules, regulations, notions and features as mentioned above in a detailed description. Finally, it can be concluded that the successful manager is the heart and part and parcel of any industry. The life of the product of any kind solemnly lies in the qualities of a successful manager.
REFERENCES:
1. Greg Geracie (July 2010). Take Charge Product Management. Greg Geracie. pp. 16–17. ISBN 978-0-615-37927-2.
2. Zieliński, Krzysztof; Szmuc, Tomasz (2005). Software Engineering: Evolution and Emerging Technologies (2nd printing. ed.). Amsterdam: IOS Press. p. 215. ISBN 1-58603-559-2.
3. Greg Cohen (2010). Agile Excellence for Product Managers: A Guide to Creating Winning Products with Agile Development Teams. Happy About. ISBN 978-1-60773-074-3.
4. Greg Cohen (2010). Agile Excellence for Product Managers: A Guide to Creating Winning Products with Agile Development Teams. Happy About. p. 57. ISBN 978-1-60773-074-3.
5. Greg Geracie (July 2010). Take Charge Product Management. Greg Geracie. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-615-37927-2.
Received on 05.05.2017 Accepted on 29.06.2017
© Asian Pharma Press All Right Reserved
Asian J. Pharm. Res. 2017; 7(3): 198-202.
DOI: 10.5958/2231-5691.2017.00030.2