Digital products are software goods or services that are intangible and exist in the digital world. These products include digital media, music, internet television, mobile applications, cloud-based software and services, or even a non-digital product with digital technologies. A digital product manager oversees the entire life cycle from its inception to when it hits the market by integrating analysis, business models, coordination, and design thinking into digital product management.
Why Do We Need a Digital Product Manager?
Companies currently manage large amounts of data created both externally and internally. It is reasonable to have a digital product manager who deals with data daily and helps the company achieve product success.
Software products and services now have feature releases and updates every other week, and a product roadmap to follow and implement every 6 to 24 months. As a result, it is critical to recruiting a digital product manager to collaborate with the engineering, sales, and marketing departments to create a product through several iterations.
Though software products are becoming less complex for customers, the life cycle of each software is becoming complex, with new features, improvements, and upgrades being added constantly after purchase. Digital Product Managers are now necessary for managing the numerous packages, dynamic pricing, pricing levels, pricing, strategy, and up-sell paths.
The DevOps model adopted for product development in software organizations has enabled the developers, testers, operations team, analytics and design team, and the product marketers to work together instead of being divided into different siloes. In such a scenario, a digital product manager can derive insights from different perspectives of the various departments and arrive at a viable product solution faster.
What Are the Roles and Responsibilities of a Digital Product Manager?
The roles and responsibilities of a digital product manager are very similar to that of a traditional product manager, and they are
- Identifying and understanding the consumer needs
- Defining the overall product
- Define product and market strategy
- Gathering requirements with in-depth research
- Guiding the engineering, sales, and marketing team
- They must serve as the primary point of contact for any information related to the product
- Taking charge of the product roadmap and communicating any changes that might occur on the way to the rest of the team
Digital product managers have an advantage over traditional product managers. They have access to a vast volume of information on the user interactions with the product, allowing them to develop the best solution possible with this incredible information flow.
What Are the Core Skills that a Digital Product Manager Must Possess?
See the Big Picture
They should be able to look at the bigger picture and then set objectives and a strategic plan to achieve these objectives for their entire cross-functional team. Cross-functional here refers to all the departments involved in the product, from its creation to marketing.
Prioritize the Right Tasks
Working with a constrained budget, timeline, and resources, a digital product manager must determine the tasks that require the most attention, design a proper initiative to focus on these priorities and add them to their product development. Roadmap
Research and Analyze
Digital product managers must possess outstanding research skills to analyze what makes their product relevant and ahead of their competitors.
Iterate and Develop
They should provide regular updates and improvements by pushing their products through continuous integration, delivery, and a continuous testing pipeline.
Create an Engaging User Experience
For any digital product, the user experience is an essential component, and failing to deliver a robust user experience can cause significant setbacks to your product. A digital product manager must know how to create an intuitive user experience with their design thinking abilities.
Conclusion
The success of a product team is greatly dependent on its digital product manager, who helps to seamlessly connect the software engineering teams with the rest of the organization. They possess a diverse range of skills, from customer development, user interface development, and product architecture to supply chain planning to help them deliver all the tasks thrown at them and achieve product success.