Weve been talking about this a bit at work recently so thought I'd record my thoughts here too...
I think it is always going to be difficult to give a definitive answer to what is a product manager in all cases, because all companies and teams have different structures and influences.
In previous roles I’ve been called a product manager, a business analyst and a project manager when really I’ve been doing similar day to day things.
I think some of the traditional tasks of a product manager are:
- Understand customer needs through research, stats analysis, user groups, interviews…
- Competitor and market analysis
- Work with all stakeholders and business owners to create longer term vision and strategy for the product
- Prioritise requirements, get agreement from the business and provide enough detail for development
- Act as product expert to answer questions on functionality
- Communicate out changes to the product and champion the product both internally and externally
- Log feedback and integrate into requirements prioritising process
