This is a cross-functional role that involves interaction with both the team and the main stakeholders in the company and clients.
Spoiler: Few professions require specialists to have such a wide range of technical and soft skills. It is important to understand that Junior-level specialists will not be assigned work at all stages of product development — they will most likely be asked to focus on specific stages. Senior-level specialists, over the course of their careers, will accumulate a solid body of knowledge that will make it easy to launch their own product.
What Does a Product Manager Do?
Such a specialist identifies user needs, ensures product development, and conducts performance analysis, making changes as necessary. The product manager's work is aimed at ensuring product success, and the high level of responsibility is compensated by high income.
Product manager salaries in the USA, according to Glassdoor, range from $121,000 to $205,000 per year. In the Kazakhstani market, salaries start from 200,000 tenge (for specialists with virtually no experience) and reach 1.4 million tenge per month for seniors — and this is not the limit.
What Career Opportunities Does the Product Manager Profession Offer?
A ProductSense study showed that in 2022, despite difficulties with career and development, half of the surveyed product managers received a promotion at their current job, of which:
- 51% — within six months to a year from the date of hire or previous promotion
- 17% — within three to six months
Companies are increasing investments in product management, while competition in the field is quite high — more than 70% of product managers invest their own time and money in continuous learning.
Thus, the specialty opens up a fairly interesting, though challenging, career path for people interested in developing management skills. DAR University mentor Ardak Berdibekov emphasizes that in product management it is quite easy to acquire the necessary management skills, thereby opening a path to company leadership.
Examples of a Product Manager's Work
First, let's define what a product is. According to the definition of marketing professor David Kotler, a product is "anything that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use, or consumption and that might satisfy a want or need. It includes physical objects, services, persons, places, organizations, and ideas."
Thus, a product manager can work in virtually any company. The concept of this profession was born at Procter & Gamble, where young marketer Neil McElroy in 1931 first suggested that sales performance analysis should include not only evaluation of marketing tools but also studying feedback from dealers and direct buyers. It was then, in the 1930s, that the first product managers took on the coordination of all processes related to the brand — from developing new products to sales in regions of presence.
Example of a real vacancy for a Junior Product Manager (company PacerPro, software developer for lawyers):
- Assist in defining the product vision and strategic plan of the company, including goal-setting and key metrics
- Collaborate with UX/UI designers to create layouts, mockups, and interactive prototypes
- Analyze customer and industry data to identify and understand user requirements, organizational goals, and technical capabilities
- Create user scenarios with acceptance criteria and develop corresponding documentation
- Coordinate with sales and engineering teams to ensure quality of functional and visual design at each stage of the software development process
Even at early career stages, the product manager's responsibilities cover the entire product lifecycle — from launch to market exit. For mid-level and senior positions, the word "assist" will disappear from job descriptions and the scope of responsibility will increase.
What You Need to Know to Become a Junior Product Manager
The Product Manager ensures the product meets user needs by regularly collecting and analyzing feedback. Depending on the stage of the product lifecycle, the specialist will focus more on analysis, development, or product improvement.
1. Understanding the Market and Consumers
A Junior product manager needs to deeply understand the market where the product is placed and the needs of the target audience. Trend analysis, competitor research, and user feedback will help create a product that meets customer expectations. Responsibilities include creating a value proposition, which requires conducting: CustDev, cohort analysis, feedback analysis, and UX research.
Useful tools:
- JTBD (Jobs To be Done) — a methodology that helps "unlock" the deep motivation and needs of people
- Voice of the Customer — a methodology that provides for the continuous collection of client feedback
The specialist must identify and describe the product's value for the client (Product Market Fit) and achieve an acceptable acquisition cost (Customer Acquisition Cost).
2. Formulating Product Strategy
A Junior Product Manager must be able to develop a product strategy, define its unique features and advantages in the market. Required skills:
- Business modeling
- Market analysis using the PAM, TAM, SAM, SOM methodology
- Hypothesis formulation using the S.M.A.R.T. method
- Profitability analysis using the Unit Economics method
- A/B testing
The product roadmap includes: product vision, update backlog, and release dates for new product features. To work effectively with the backlog, prioritization skills are required: RICE (Return, Impact, Confidence, Ease) or MoSCoW (Must-Have, Should-Have, Could-Have, Won't-Have), as well as skills for creating user personas.
3. Working with Technical Specifications
Understanding the basic technical aspects of the product and interaction with the development team are important skills at the product development stage. A Junior product manager must clearly formulate technical requirements, compose User Stories, and communicate effectively with developers. At this stage, UX design knowledge, MVP creation skills, and CJM (customer journey map) skills are helpful.
4. Analytics and Metrics
The ability to analyze data, identify key success metrics, and monitor their dynamics will help make informed decisions about product development. At this stage, Product Growth Management provides an advantage — although it is a mid-level skill, it ranks among the top three most sought-after skills for active product managers, as a significant number of companies, especially in IT, are focused on rapid customer growth.
5. Project Management and Team Communication
A Junior Product Manager must be able to effectively manage a project, set priorities, and monitor deadlines. The ability to communicate well with various stakeholders, including the development team, marketing, and technical support, is a key aspect of successful product management.
What else you need to know and be able to do:
- Core project management methodologies — Waterfall and Agile (especially Scrum)
- Composing IT product requirements using the Use Cases method and creating a SRS (Software Requirements Specification)
- Quickly acquiring domain expertise and mastering new industries
- Soft skills: strategic and critical thinking, problem-solving, curiosity, and storytelling
What Tools Does a Product Manager Use?
| Purpose | Tools |
|---|---|
| Product roadmap visualization | Miro, Aha!, ProductPlan |
| Notes and documentation | Notion, Evernote |
| User surveys | Google Forms, SurveyMonkey |
| Design | Figma |
| Agile projects | Jira, Trello |
