Understanding the skills for a new role – from project manager to product manager
The top image is from a wonderful article on grafting fruit trees on the Organic Gardening Resource Center.
Many of us spend part of our careers as project managers. Learning how to manage a project and get the best out of our people is a foundational learning experience for many of us. It’s a time when we build core skills that we will use across many roles as we build our careers.
What are some of the core skills associated with the role of ‘project manager’?
Reading from the TeamFit skill graph, I find the following skills associated with project management. Skills include
Project Management Methodologies, Certifications (Wrike has some good information on this) and even roles:
Adaptive Project Framework
Agile
Critical Path Method
Kanban
PMP (Project Management Professional)
RACI
Scrum
Scrum Master
Waterfall
Core Skills
Active Listening
Coaching
Communications
Conflict Resolution
Critical Thinking
Decision Making
Delegation
Dispute Resolution
Prioritization
Report Writing
Time Management
Business Skills
Budgeting
Budget Management
Client Communication
Client Management
Design Thinking
Functional Analysis
Project Finance
Resource Management
Risk Management
Most project managers also have domain skills that are dependent on the industry they work in and the type of projects they take on.
Of course project management can mean many different things. I have a friend who describes himself as a project manager. His projects include setting up infrastructure support for UN peacekeeping missions that can include thousands of people from multiple countries operating on many different bases under extreme conditions. People also use ‘project management’ to describe the development of a five-page personal website with two people. This is why TeamFit ties skills to specific projects and roles.
Given that a person has experience has a project manager, what other roles could they move into? Of course, one option is to manage larger and larger projects or to manage multiple projects at the same time. Another is to move from project management to program management, where a program has many different projects under it.
One natural progression that we have been seeing over the past few years is from project manager to product manager. When I am feeling cynical I suspect that this is because of the two sound similar. Project management is mostly about the ‘what’ and ‘how’ while product management is about the ‘what’ and ‘why’.
Over the past few months, I have seen people move into product management from Design, Marketing, Business Consulting and above all from Project Management. These are of course informal data, over time we hope that TeamFit will be able to track this kind of role evolution and correlate it with skills.
That said, what skills are project managers going to need to add to their repertoire if they are going to excel at product management?
Obviously, they are going to need deep domain skills in whatever area the product is offered. They are also going to need to understand customer emotions and economics, customer value and pricing, customer requirements, the technology limitations that shape their design and delivery options. In addition to design thinking some of the skills a product manager will want to pick up include:
Product Marketing (connected to but not the same as Project Management)
Design Thinking
Service Design
Value Management including Value Definition and Value Communication
Pricing Strategy
Some useful tools I have seen leading product management groups teach new product managers are …
Market Segmentation
Positioning Statement
Brand Benefit Ladder
Economic Value Estimation
Product managers are constantly inundated with ‘good ideas’ from customers, analysts, designers and engineers. They also have to content with the ‘not always good ideas of their bosses. So perhaps the most important ‘skill’ for new product managers is practice in saying ‘NO!’
What skills have you built your career on?
What roles did you play early in your career that helped you to build these skills?