“Who is the Technical Product Manager?”. Before answering the question it would be better to answer to the “Who is a Product Manager?” in software business.
The Product Manager is the person who observes and manages every step from the initial stage to the final product, by taking part at every stage of the product lifecycle. The management of these steps includes responsibilities such as determining and prioritizing the application features within the framework of the company’s vision and goals, time and cost management, conducting market research and setting targets within this framework, and adopting the role of being the person who provides and maintains the communication between the technical and non-technical team. During the function of managing all these processes, it decides on the trade-offs to be made between the target, time and features in order to maximize efficiency and productivity.
The Product Manager position may have sub-breakdowns such as Data/Analytics Product Manager, Product Marketing Manager, and Growth Product Manager, and also may include higher positions such as Technical Product Manager, Senior Product Manager, Product Lead, Group Product Manager, Director of Product Management, VP of Product and Chief Product Officer.
A Technical Product Manager, on the other hand, is a person with a technical background who, unlike the Product Manager, and is more concerned with the technical aspects of the product lifecycle, rather than sales and marketing. Having a technical background is a preferred feature because they focus more on the technical aspects of the product strategy and work with the development, infrastructure and network teams.
The Technical Product Manager may be the owner of the certain packages of the product, or he may act as a person who can be consulted as an expert on technical issues in different processes. Thanks to their technical background and their familiarity with and awareness of technical operations, they can make technical predictions about internal functioning, evaluate the accuracy of the predictions made, review technical specifications and architecture, and perform infrastructure and security design and improvement processes. In addition, they can play an active role in determining the integration plans and the technology to be used in case of outsourcing. The design and creation of all these processes, as well as their documentation and updates, are among the duties of the Technical Product Manager.
Considered within this framework, the duties of the Technical Product Manager can be listed as follows:
- Understanding customer needs and business goals and transforming them into software requirements.
- Determining the scope of the project within time, features and budget and rearranging it when necessary.
- Reviewing requirements for software teams and breaking them down if necessary.
- Prioritizing requirements around team efficiency, product quality, and product effectiveness.
- To ensure that the product vision is understood accurately and clearly by the Software teams.
- To take precautions to ensure that the final product is created in a way that best meets the business objectives and customer needs.
- By following the development process closely, to prevent all kinds of disruptions, changes and delays, to revise the plans when necessary and to inform the stakeholders.
- To follow technical and industrial trends during the development process and to analyze their effects (potential opportunity or threat) on the company and/or product, and to take necessary actions or make suggestions.
- Organizing training/briefing events related to the product and participating them if necessary.
- Planning and performing the tests and evaluating the results to ensure that the necessary actions are taken.
- Determining success criteria for testing processes and clarifying them in consultation with stakeholders.
- To ensure that the product documentation is up-to-date and of high quality.
Considering these tasks, we can say that a Technical Product Manager should have the following skills:
- Analytical skills
- Ability to work with cross-functional units
- Communication skills
- Vision