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Key takeaways

• Being a successful product manager requires a unique blend of technical, business, and interpersonal skills.

• You'll also need to work with interdisciplinary and cross-functional teams, such as engineering, business, sales, and marketing.

• Those who tend to excel as product managers are strategic thinkers with excellent communication skills who thrive on solving complex problems and balancing diverse stakeholder needs.

Explore the different skills, by category, that you'll need to build as you set out on a product manager career path. Afterward, learn how to apply key product management skills, tools, and techniques to engage and manage key stakeholders and clients with the IBM Product Manager Professional Certificate.

4 technical skills for product managers

While you鈥檒l often be looking at the big picture of a product and helping the vision come together, you鈥檒l likely spend some time detailing product specifics and performing basic analyses. A few top technical skills that can help you with this aspect of the position include:

1. Technical writing and communication

Using technical writing skills, you can document product requirements and communicate insights to your team. This helps to detail the current product鈥檚 requirements, showcase features for upcoming products, and keep a record of your team鈥檚 design flow.聽

It鈥檚 also important to understand technical information and communicate it to your teams. While this will vary depending on your product, you鈥檒l likely discuss the technical architecture of your product, the software, such as the application programming interface (API), your team is using during the design process, and how to prioritize design features or requirements.聽

2. Data analysis

As a product manager, you'll often work with data to understand customer satisfaction, product metrics, and market trends, which can help you stay up-to-date with the industry's demands while ensuring your product actually delivers on its promises. Data analysis can reveal how your product performs in various scenarios and identify any unexpected outcomes. You can also use data analysis to identify market gaps, anticipate emerging trends and customer needs, and make adjustments to your product based on customer feedback.

3. Customer and user experience (CX/UX)

By leveraging customer and user experience frameworks, you can design a product that more closely meets customer expectations. Instead of only considering whether the product meets a particular functionality, design thinking helps you assess whether customers enjoy the experience of using your product and prefer it over alternative options.聽

4. Agile methodology and rapid prototyping

The Agile methodology focuses on an iterative approach that helps you quickly obtain feedback on whether your product is likely to succeed in the market. This enables you to test the risk of launching your product and understand whether it performs its intended functions. You can assess your product鈥檚 feasibility, scalability, and usability without incurring excessive costs.

The demand for AI skills is high. You can prepare for your first role as a product manager while also learning to manage AI-driven products through Microsoft's AI Product Manager Professional Certificate program. In as little as three months, you'll have earned a certificate for your resume from an industry leader in technology.

3 business skills for product managers

Even if you have an exceptional product idea, marketing the product to customers and using resources wisely are essential steps to a successful product launch. Business expertise can help you manage your team鈥檚 budget and project revenue and align your product strategies with your available resources. A few skills to build on the business side include:聽

1. Market research and customer development

Market research involves understanding the current market landscape and projecting how your product will fare with customers. Customer development skills help you bring products to market more quickly and develop a product specific to the 鈥渢arget鈥� you are trying to hit. Not only can these skills help you identify gaps and anticipate user needs, but they can also help you continually refine existing products to meet new demands and stay on top of trends.聽

2. Resource efficiency

You鈥檒l likely encounter several scenarios in which you have to make challenging decisions about resource utilization. With limited time, budget, and staff, deciding which idea to pursue or how to allocate resources more effectively is an essential part of the job.

3. Using KPIs

As a product manager, you may work with key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rates (prospective customers to paying customers), daily activity on your website, and customer satisfaction rates. By understanding which metrics are most important to you and how to set them accurately, you can better track the progress of your product and make adjustments where necessary. You might do this through customer segmentation research, competitor analysis, or exploratory market research.

3 interpersonal skills for product managers

Product management is team-centered, meaning interpersonal skills are among the most valuable for this position. You鈥檒l need to be able to communicate clearly with your team, adapt to changing environments, and solve problems effectively. Workplace skills that can help you excel in this position include:

1. Cooperation and negotiation

You will likely be involved in negotiations in almost every aspect of this position. With customers, you might negotiate prices, fixes, or features on your product. With your engineering or sales teams, you may negotiate timelines and the pace at which each team can complete specific tasks. You鈥檒l need to balance protecting your team and ensuring you can meet customer demands. When continually making decisions involving multiple team members, it鈥檚 crucial to facilitate cooperation between professionals while negotiating a timeline and execution plan that works for everyone.

2. Critical thinking and problem-solving

Design teams often face unexpected challenges throughout the product life cycle, and a product manager needs to be able to help resolve these issues. As a product manager, it鈥檚 key for you to think critically about each challenge and find a creative solution that provides the best possible outcome.聽

3. Collaboration and influence

Because you鈥檙e working on dynamic teams, collaborating with diverse professionals is integral to your job as a product manager. For example, you might need to communicate design changes to your engineering teams, translate engineering insights for your business team, and communicate engineering requirements to your design team. Each team will have its own set of priorities and goals, which means you will need to communicate with each team in a way that makes sense for them.聽

You鈥檒l also sometimes have to make difficult decisions and prioritize certain aspects of the product, and your team needs to trust you to make the right decisions. This influence helps keep your team cohesive and working toward a common end goal.

How to build your product management skills

Building product manager skills involves a combination of formal learning and practical experience. Seeking opportunities on cross-functional projects can help you gain experience working on interdisciplinary teams and building interpersonal skills for this environment. Other ways to build related skills include:

• Degree programs: Degree programs, such as bachelor鈥檚 or master鈥檚 degrees in business or marketing, can help you learn to manage a product throughout its life cycle and work with metrics like KPIs.

• Online courses and Professional Certificates: Taking online courses can help you deepen your expertise in technical skills and develop your abilities in management and collaboration.

• Related entry-level positions: Landing an entry-level position can expose you to the environment where more senior product managers work. As you progress, you can volunteer for additional responsibilities to help develop your skills and prepare for a product manager role.

• Books and online communities: Leveraging available materials and communities can help you acquire the necessary skill set to work as a product manager. Try listening to podcasts that discuss common product management experiences or reading a book written by experts in the field.

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