With all the heavy responsibilities on your shoulders, being a Product Manager is not easy. It is important to stay on your toes and up to date on knowledge. You will always have to educate yourself on new skills and habits. Here are our top 5 Product Manager best practices to keep yourself up to date on.
1. Team Coordination
Always stay in contact with your teams. Making a product is a large undertaking and you will have to rely on your team to build and market it. Every teammate is vital to the creation of a good product. So it makes sense to be in constant contact with your team. However, do not micromanage your team. Developing strong leadership skills and effective communication with your team are some of the most important Product Manager best practices you can hone, and are soft skills every beginner needs to master.
2. Customer Feedback
Customers are an important source of information. They can give you live results of your product and update you on any faults that your product might have. They can also give suggestions to help improve your product on points where you and your team have failed to see. The end goal of your product is to be used by your customer so make sure the product fits the users’ needs.
Make sure you’re collecting customer feedback in an effective way and applying what you learn from your users!
3. Overall Goal
What is the big picture? What is the overarching goal for the product that is being developed? Who are the consumers? Try to understand the purpose of the product. Understand everything so you can start pointing out a direction for the team to take.
As a Product Manager, you’ll be writing the product vision and leading your team towards that big-picture goal. After you figure your product vision, you can start working on your strategy for the product.
If you don’t have any experience with creating a strategy or developing a new product, fret not!
Product Gym teaches you all about the technical fundamentals and business fundamentals you need to know. Most of our members don’t have prior Product Manager experience when they join our community; instead, they rely solely on our material to get them going. And they have the results to show for it — they not only have gotten multiple Product Manager job offers, but they also are acing their new Product Manager roles (despite having little to no prior experience).
4. Network
There is only so much one person can do by themselves. There are loads of communities out there for you to connect with. Connect with other product managers to see what they found helpful to their work. There are probably experienced product managers who have gone through what you are going through right now.
That’s where our Product Gym community can come in!
Our members score 3-5 job offers in as little as 45 days, and continue to have lifetime access to our material and community.
This means that you can reach out to them for tips and advice whenever you need. They will also be able to give you feedback on your job application material and support you on your journey.
5. Compare
Pay attention to other products besides your own. Look at successful products that have been launched and analyze what made them so successful. Come up with ways you may be able to apply what you’ve learned to your own product.
You can also brainstorm and discuss these techniques and strategies with our Product Gym community. With so many ideas and thoughts flowing through our community forums, you will never have scarcity of new ideas for your product.
Apply These Product Manager Best Practices Today!
If you’re learning the ropes of product management, it helps to have some support. Product Gym is a lifetime membership program for PMs, PM job hunters, and product people of all sorts. Getting people jobs in product management is our bread and butter: that makes us very good at assessing where you’re at in your job hunt and equipping you with the knowledge and skills you need to kickstart your dream career in product management. And that includes knowing and applying Product Manager best practices at every stage of your career journey.
If you want to learn more about the ins and outs of Product Manager skills and job search tactics, get in touch with us! We’re offering free career coaching sessions with our in-house team of PM Recruiter experts. We’d love to hear from you.
