The focus here is completely on Product Management for digital technology. The life of a Product Manager may be completely different when you think of, for example, FMCG or packaged goods.

The Mission of Product Management

The glorifying statement:

As Product Managers, it is our core responsibility to build winning products that deliver great value to customers.

A bit more down to earth:

The Product Manager is the champion, the evangelist, the strategist, the voice of the customer.

And as Marty Cagan puts it:

As Product Managers, our job is to build products that our customers love, yet work for our business.

<aside> 💡 Product Management shall understand the real need of the customer.

</aside>

Essentially, Product Management is needed to avoid situations as depicted with the ill-famous example of a tire swing:

https://image.slidesharecdn.com/class3v3projmgmtfortrainingsu09-090714201254-phpapp01/95/project-management-for-training-class-3-3-728.jpg?cb=1247602619

As illustrated, there are gaps and misconceptions all along the lifecycle. The primary job of Product Management is to gain a deep understanding of the customer's needs and deliver a solution that serves these needs.

<aside> 💡 Product Management is cross-functional.

</aside>

In essence, PM is working at the intersection of customers, business and technology:

https://www.prodpad.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/what-is-product-management-1.png

<aside> 💡 For that, Product Management connects essentially to the entire organization.

</aside>

When the Product Manager works at an Enterprise B2B company, the situation gets even more complicated as there are more stakeholders to consider:

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/f5c69660-5617-4005-be4d-ade0cf4cb16e/PM_as_a_spider_in_the_web.png

More details will be discussed in B2C vs. (Enterprise) B2B, but in a nutshell the additional aspects are: