Jared Franklin

This is a fantastic description for web product managers.  Depending on who I’m talking to, I often have a difficult time explaining exactly what I do all day/everyday. This post does a fantastic job explaining why that is; product managers encompass many skills and abilities empowering them to work on many aspects of a product and requiring them to interface with different groups in an organization.

I’ve always enjoyed product management for the sole fact that it cannot be taught and/or learned in school.  I would encourage anyone with good judgment who enjoys working hard to explore a career in product management. Marty Cagan goes a bit further…

• A passion for products is essential
• Customer centric
• Must be a genius intelligent
• Working hard - ” But there are many people that want to be able to work 40 hours a week and most importantly, leave their work problems at the office when they leave at the end of the day. This unfortunately is not the life of a successful product manager.”
• Integrity - “…he must work by influencing those on his team. This persuasion is done by mutual trust and respect.”
• Able to Present and Communicate effectively
• Takes full responsibility for all things product related - “…sees himself as the CEO of the product.”
• Able to apply technology

Cagan on hiring talented product managers… “After reading this list of traits and skills, you may be thinking that such people are extremely rare. They are rare - about as rare as good products are… Many companies think that all you need is someone from the marketing organization or someone with an MBA. In the old-school definition of product manager, this may have been true, but this is a recipe for failure today…My favorite source for product managers is to look for people with the characteristics described above and then use training, an informal mentoring program, and/or a formal employee development program to develop these people into strong product managers.” 

Funny how it worked out for me…