The document discusses the role and responsibilities of a product manager. It is summarized as follows: 1) A product manager is responsible for the development of products for an organization. They work to deeply understand customer problems, inspire and organize development teams, and drive measurable business impact. 2) Key responsibilities include developing a vision, identifying user needs, defining minimum viable products, creating roadmaps, measuring impact, prioritizing improvements, and coordinating across teams. 3) A typical day involves meetings, decision making, analyzing customer feedback, and ensuring alignment across business functions like marketing, sales, and customer support.

1. WHAT DOES A
PRODUCT MANAGER
ACTUALLY DO?
Graham O'Connor

2. Graham O'Connor
Product Manager @ HubSpot
www.linkedin.com/in/graham-
oconnor
@grahamoconnor
7

3. GRADUATED FROM DCU
Studied Computer Applications (Software
Engineering)
2008
CONSULTANT
Business Intelligence
2008
2010 SOFTWARE DEVELOPER
Travel Booking Engines
2011 SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Online Payments Software
2014 SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Digital Marketing Software
2017 PRODUCT MANAGER
Customer Service Software

4. PM
PD
TL
Product Team
Product Manager (PM)
Product Designer (PD)
Technical Lead (TL)
Software Engineers

5. Product Team
PM
PD
TL
UXR
PI
UXC
UX Researcher (UXR)
UX Copywriter (UXC)
Product Insights Analyst (PI)

6. Product Manager
A product manager is a professional role that is
responsible for the development of products for an
organization, known as the practice of product
management. *
*Wikipedia

8. Product
Manager
Works to deeply understand the
problems facing the business's
customers
Inspires, organizes and publicizes
the work of the development and
design teams
Finds opportunities to drive
measurable impact for the
business and their customers

9. The role of a Product Manager differs from company to
company
*

10. Solution ExecutionVision Iteration
Stages of Product

11. Vision

12. Understand the problem
Discovery Surveys
Discovery interviews
Research papers
Gain high level insights about the problem. Help identify
people for interviews.
Gain insights into shifts/trends happening in the world that
are related to the problem.
Develop a deep understanding of the problem.
Examples:
• When does the problem occur?
• How much pain is being caused?

13. Determine the strategy
Who will the product solve for?
Who is the competition and what makes us
different from them?
How does solving this problem fit into the
business strategy?

14. Outline the Vision
Mission
Problem
Strategy
Goals
Metrics
Mission statement of the team.
What problem are you solving?
Vision
Where are we going?
How are we going to get there?
How will we know when we arrive at the goal?
How will we know we are on the right path?

15. Solution

16. Workshops
Identify the user needs/jobs to be done
Ideate solutions to solve identified user
needs/jobs to be done.
Example: A user needs to discover accommodation
in their travel destination.
• Allow users to filter accommodation by location
• Allow users to search accommodation using a
map.

17. Identify the MVP
Minimal Viable Product
A minimum viable product (MVP) has just
enough features to satisfy early customers
and can provide feedback for future. It
should also show prospective value to keep
initial customers – they need to see and
believe in the vision of final product.
Image Source: Altkom Software and Consulting

18. Roadmap
A product roadmap is a shared source of
truth that outlines the vision, direction,
priorities, and progress of a product over
time. It’s a plan of action that aligns the team
around short- and long-term goals for the
product, and how they will be achieved.
Image Source: Kohactive

19. Execution

20. Meetings... A lot of meetings
Triad Cordination
Team Standup
Weekly meeting between PM, PD, TL to track the past week's
progress, highlight any issues and set priorities for the week.
Weekly meeting with entire team to discuss what they did
last week and what they plan on doing this week.
Cross-team Collaboration
Coordinate with dependent teams to minimise roadblocks.
Product Group
Discuss work in progress and future work with other product
managers.

21. Decision Making
Making slow decisions creates a bottleneck for
the team.
Hesitation kills creativity, morale and momentum.
Be wrong as fast as you can.
Examples
Design feedback
Engineering questions
Roadblock resolution

22. COORDINATE
WITH THE
BUSINESS
MARKETING
Ensure marketing have all
of the information they
need to craft a story
around the product.
SERVICE
Ensure customer service
have all information they
need to enable customers
to be successful with the
product.
SALES
Ensure sales are aware of
all of the capabilities of the
product and who they
should target.

23. Iteration

24. Customer Feedback
Feedback Channels
Survey tools
Customer interviews
Email
Support Tickets
Slack
Online forums
Feedback Analysis
Analyze customer feedback looking for common
patterns.
Decide what is urgent vs a backlog item.

25. Measuring Impact
Quantitative
Activation
Revenue
Retention
WAU (Weekly Active Users)
NPS (Net Promoter Score)
Customer Satisfaction
Qualitative
Customer Interviews
Usability sessions
Open ended questionaires
General product sentiment

26. Prioritising
Improvements
Impact/Effort matrix used to guide prioritisation.
High impact, low effort generally given highest
priority.
Prioritised features must move the metrics that
the team are focused on.Image Source: Edrawsoft.com

27. Day in the Life
of a Product
Manager
9.00 AM
10.00 AM
Respond to emails and Slack messages
Organise personal Trello board and set priorites
for the week
10.30 AM
Check up on product metrics in Amplitude.
11.00 AM
Triad meeting (Product Manager, Technical Lead,
Product Designer)
12.00 PM
Lunch
1.00 PM
Customer Interview
2.00 PM
Respond to issues in GitHub
3.00 PM
Discuss new designs with the team
4.00 PM
Work on new vision presentation

28. Frequently Asked
Questions

29. HOW DO I
LAND A
PRODUCT
MANAGER
ROLE?
Know the Problem
Demonstrate expert knowledge of the problem
space.
Know the Customer
Demonstrate expert knowledge of the business's
customer.
Product Manager Experience
Demonstrate product manager experience in
previous roles.

30. WHAT ARE THE
MOST
IMPORTANT
SKILLS FOR
PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT?
Communication
Success massively hinges on how well you
communicate. Verbal, written, presentations,
storytelling.
Problem Solving
Curious to learn about problems and relish
solving them.
Organization
There are a lot of inputs and moving parts.
Keeping every organized is key.
Analytical
Make sense of all the data to guide you towards
decisions.

31. Recommended Reading

32. Questions
?