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No matter what form it takes, a good spec rallies the team around a goal and provides enough detail for the team to execute flawlessly. A PM at TripAdvisor once presented a spec written on a napkin. Great specs can be found in JIRA tickets and Slack channels. A good feature spec does not need to be a lengthy doc - in fact, it probably shouldn’t be. Success flows from a PM’s ability to clearly communicate what the team needs to build and why. Feature Specification The ability for a PM to gather requirements, define functionality, and set goals in a clear, actionable format that can be used to communicate with the team and drive product delivery.įlawless execution starts here. They know there is already enough risk in understanding customer needs and crafting the strategy around those needs. The foundation of successful product management is the ability to work with a cross-functional team to define, build, and launch well-designed, stable products. Let’s dive into each of the 12 competencies of peak product managers and learn how you can join their ranks: Product Execution They do whatever it takes to deliver business impact. They do whatever it takes to deliver valuable outcomes for their users, their team, and their company. The best PMs - the peak product managers - don’t just ship features. As a PM leader becomes more senior, Product Strategy and Influencing People become the critical path to growth. Product Execution is a critical area of competency early in a PM’s career. The importance of each competency evolves as a PM becomes more senior. The difference between the average PM and the peak PM is an understanding of gaps and the ability to unite a team that fills those gaps. Most PMs, even peak PMs, excel at only a handful of these competencies.

The best PMs are both creative innovators and rigorous optimizers. It requires fastidious attention to detail and grand, abstract thinking. It is a role that requires people to be simultaneously empathetic and analytical. There is a lot to master, and there are points of tension in the PM role. These 12 competencies are as close as I’ve found to a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive ( MECE) definition of product management. We codified those skills into 12 competencies organized into four areas that are critical to driving business impact: Product Execution (the ability to build exceptional products), Customer Insight (the ability to understand and deliver on customer needs), Product Strategy (the ability to drive business impact via product innovation), and Influencing People (the ability to rally people around the team’s work). At TripAdvisor, we found that the strongest PMs are intellectual athletes who excel at a diverse, mutually reinforcing set of skills. The fluidity of the PM role means that it can be hard to define what traits make a PM successful. Like mortar, they must fluidly fill the gaps to make the whole team stronger. Product Managers are like the mortar in a brick wall. It is highly demanding and varies considerably by the situation and from company to company. Product Management is a fluid, connective role. She told new PMs at Microsoft: “ You are like the mortar in a brick wall.” Like mortar, you must fluidly fill the gaps between the bricks to make the whole wall stronger. At that time, the PM role was in its infancy, but its importance was already clear.

She started at Microsoft in the mid-1990s.

Years ago, I met an early PM at Microsoft who had helped develop what we think of as Product Management today. I cover these areas in more detail under the section Putting the Competencies into Practice. I’ve decided to start with this Product Competency Toolkit because it provides a foundation for how PM’s can approach their careers and how companies can think about maximizing the impact of their product teams. Over the next couple months, I’ll be releasing a set of content and tools that I hope will help people and companies deal with the challenges ahead. As I type this, we are in the middle of the COVID-19 global pandemic.