The role of a Product Manager is quite challenging yet critically important in an organization. Right from updating processes to strengthening the teams and foster collaboration across the company, product managers (PM) ensure long-term success of the company and tackle opportunities as markets evolve.
On the other hand, the constant pressure to develop high-quality products over short periods makes the PM’s job very stressful with high-performance expectations all the time.
If you wish to make a career as a product manager, here are the pros and cons of being a PM that you need to be aware of.
Pros of Being a Product Manager
Some of the benefits of being a product manager are-
Power of Strengthening Collaboration Between Internal Teams
The most significant part of any product manager’s role, besides strategizing, is communicating with the internal teams and everyone else involved in development.
Product managers in any organization are responsible for creating an overall structure that all the internal teams will work within, and also to work collaboratively across the business environment.
As a PM, you not only get the advantage of drawing a decent Technical project manager salary but also getting the responsibility of bringing together a group of individuals with different professional backgrounds and ensuring they seamlessly work with each other.
Further, as a product manager, you also need to create and define clear roles and boundaries for each of the team members to minimize the chances of any ambiguity associated with the project.
Robust Product Knowledge
Being a product manager requires a diverse set of skills to design, develop, and market a product. While doing a Product manager internship, you get the opportunity to gain an excellent knowledge of producing the required products and become fluent in systems layout.
As an efficient product manager, you get to work as a universal translator between processes, so each employee of the organization can develop the same skills that will best serve the customers.
With a product roadmap in hand, product managers are always equipped to present their plan to various stakeholders, investors, and the rest of their team. They are also responsible for generating and maintaining consistent support for the product.
Help in Aligning Market Needs
The product manager of any organization has the entire responsibility to manage the team with diversified skills and drive the team with techniques and experience without much involvement.
As a product manager, you get to examine and analyze market research so that the product can be differentiated and provide the customer with the total value.
This sort of analysis is quite critical to the release of the product as the value proposition and defining features can’t be conclusively established without it. This leads to the development of an innovative product that solves a critical problem within the market.
Minimizes Risk of Product Failure
There are several instances in a product lifecycle when even a robust understanding of the target audience, coupled with a clearly defined roadmap for the product, can’t prevent failure.
However, the expertise and experience of a qualified product manager can be instrumental in minimizing it substantially. They are responsible for the end to end development of products, including the market changes and the required changes for existing products.
Having an in-depth knowledge of what the market exactly wants is the quality that sets a professional product manager apart and helps them reduce the chances of product failure.
Analyze Data and Feedback
Once the product is tested and launched, it is the responsibility of the product manager to ask and collate direct feedback from users to know what’s working, what needs to be changed, and what needs to be removed entirely. A product manager strategically uses this data to inform future iterations of the product.
Cons of Being a Product Manager
Along with the pros of being a product manager, there are some cons too. Some of them are discussed below-
Strict Self-management
Being a product manager can be incredibly stressful at times. There are multiple tasks that a PM is required to do with everyone from the organization, including CEO and engineering teams expecting different things from them.
This often makes the product manager struggle with revenue targets, managing tight deadlines, market demands, and resource constraints.
Accountability
One of the other significant challenges for any product manager is to manage the pressure of accountability for things that are primarily out of their control. In case of crisis or failure situations, it is usually the product manager and team that is solely held responsible for the result.
Monotony
While product managers do have multiple responsibilities to handle, they tend to work more or less on the same product in the long term, rather than transitioning from assignment to assignment as a project manager does. This makes the job monotonous at times, with the risk of losing interest in the role.
Responsibility Without Much Authority
Although product management is a challenging role with a lot of responsibility, it doesn’t give much authority to the product managers. There are several organizations where product managers are only responsible for creating a product vision strategy and execution through owning the product roadmap without enjoying any authority.
This aspect of the role can be quite frustrating to handle and requires a lot of patience on the part of product managers.
No Clear Definition of the Role
Another drawback of being a PM is the ambiguity of the role itself, with no clarity of the actual job profile. In many organizations, even the stakeholders aren’t sure of what a PM does.
In Conclusion
Similar to the sides of a coin, the product manager’s role also comes with pros and cons. Before making the career choice, you need to thoroughly assess your reasons and interests to look in a PM role.
If you wish to make a career as a product manager, it’s essential to realize that although there are many positive sides to the role with immense learning opportunities, there will also be stressful and hard parts of the role that need you to overcome over time.