What does a typical day for a Product Manager look like?
Refresher — What is the purpose of a product manager?
The purpose of a product manager is to represent the voice of the customer, shaping the vision of the product, and maximizing the value delivered towards that vision by prioritizing the work for execution.
So how does a Product Manager do that?
They work to identify their target customer, look for underserved needs (things important to them, that they’re not satisfied with), then they work to ideate on a product value proposition to meet those needs.
Once they find that product — they break it down into a feature set (must-haves, performance, and delighters), design a compelling UX (user experience — so the look and feel, layout, and interactions) to make that come to life.
Once they do that — they test with customers. A lot. As much as they can — to get real validated feedback, confirming or denying their assumptions.
And they do this whole pyramid as quickly and as efficiently as possible, working in fast cycles to quickly produce something, get real customer feedback, and inject that feedback back into the cycle.
So what does a typical day look like for a Product Manager if that’s what they are trying to do?
Well, we see a number of sources that detail this, but I personally quite like the description that Jackie Baravo posted here, that was turned into slides by Karsten Rieke².
If we simplify the below further by grouping — it looks like this:
- Research & Analysis — 30%
Working out what to do next - Design & Decomposition — 30%
Working with your team to break down how you’ll do that - Guiding the Delivery — 30%
Working to guide your team through delivery - Self Development — 10%
Working on yourself
But my days don’t look anything like that?
That’s pretty normal, the universe is a slave to entropy — so to is your inbox, your slack notifications, and the many meetings in your calendar.
What’s important isn’t to make every day ‘perfect’ — but to ensure you find time to balance your time between the problem space, solution space, and management — while leaving yourself time leftover to invest in your own personal development.
So maybe take stock of your time, turn off those notifications, create some space for continuous improvement, don’t be a duck, and don’t get too caught up in the process.
References
- Olsen. D (2015), The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid, Wiley; 1 edition
- Rieke. K (2012), How to survive as a Product Manager, Slideshare.com
