Trying to come up with a single, global definition of what “Product Management” is and what it incorporates, often seems like a massive exercise in folly. Wikipedia describes Product Management as “an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning, forecasting, or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle.” And, while that is an entirely accurate statement, it’s also completely useless to those of us who have taken a role in a company that calls itself by that name. Looking further afield, you’ll find others who claim to have a definition that’s both specific and useful. Consider the following:
- Pragmatic Marketing: “Product Management is the messenger of the market.”
- AIPMM: “Product management is the cross-functional discipline within a product development organization responsible for managing a product (a tangible good or intangible service) throughout all phases of its lifecycle.”
- Marty Cagan: “The job of the product manager is to discover a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible.”
Some of these are better than others, but to me all of them fail to capture the practical side of what exactly it is that a Product Manager does, and why it’s important to a business to have a professional PM in that role. To that end, I’ve coined the following definition of Product Management, that I’ve polished and updated over the course of my years in the profession:
“Product Management is a multi-disciplinary role that guides the strategic and tactical efforts of a product to ensure that, in the end, a marketable product is delivered to the end user. Their primary purpose is to gather market intelligence, perform customer research, translate customer ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ into requirements, and occasionally to shepherd those requirements through to delivery.”