How To Get A Product Manager Job

Introduction

For product managers (PDMs), key performance indicators (KPIs) are the strongest, defensible tool in decision making. They place the progress of the work of the team, the progress of the product and the overall business. Product director KPIs include specific activities associated with the product, customers, and the overall process for bringing a product to market.

KPIs should be used to celebrate success and identify risk. Conversely, the lack of KPIs go out a product manager blind to what'southward going on and prove a weakness in direction style. Production managers should make up one's mind which product direction metrics are the virtually important to track and written report.

Charting KPIs enables defendable decisions.

The role of a production manager can be mystifying to many stakeholders. Some view it from their understanding of a project manager—keeping the progress on rail and analogous people to work together. Others view the role as a liaison betwixt the sales teams and the engineering organization—translating business requirements into technical requirements.

Progressive executive teams recognize production managers every bit the overall business owner or a business organisation unit manager for a specific set of deliverables—the product. Production managers are responsible for the perception they want for their function. Strong PDMs leverage product management success metrics as a tool to demonstrate their proficiency in managing their product. More than chiefly, product KPIs are the foundation for monitoring the success or failure of products or the company.

Product Management KPIs Define Performance

Product director KPIs cover a broad set of topics. Production managers that come from an applied science background often focus on creating KPIs associated with the product. For product managers with a marketing background, the response is usually associated with usage or customer behaviors.

Product managers must brand the judgment call identifying what is virtually useful to assist them in their controlling and their communications strategy. They should work with the executive team to identify the production management metrics that help them with their decision-making and in support of corporate goals. When pitching new ideas and asking for the investments required, having data about previous trends, and identifying methods of validating investment strategies will create a stronger business case.

KPIs can be organized into various categories. It is of import for product managers to explore which product management KPIs are important to communicate equally part of building credibility, encouraging date, celebrating success, or identifying trends and issues.

When to Use Which KPIs

Professional PDMs will be selective when creating KPI reports. Depending on the level of automation, KPIs tin can involve many people. Selection the top v or six that give you the confidence in your progress and in your decision-making.

Business Performance KPIs

The near mutual set of performance targets are the business KPIs that product managers often overlook. Creating KPIs for business organisation performance will assistance identify trends in the success of the growth of the business. These are focused effectually customers, customer lifetime value, bookings, revenues, costs, and profitability. For executives, these business organisation performance metrics volition exist the ones that drive investment decisions, lay a foundation for additional headcount, or drive go-no-go decisions at the departmental or product level.

The post-obit table identifies some KPIs relating to business concern performance, a suggested cadence, and descriptions.

Business Performance KPIs

KPI	Measure	Description	Opportunity
Revenues (monthly)	Dollars/currency by product/feature	Revenues are the top line dollars. On a subscription, it's not the overall deal size, but the dollars that have been recognized for the product or service used in a period (monthly or annually).	Revenues are important from a balance sheet and cash catamenia perspective, only bookings are a stronger metric for growth monitoring.
Bookings (monthly)	Dollars/currency by production/feature	Bookings are a bounden delivery for revenues for the product/service. A 3-twelvemonth contract booking, for example, is non recognized as revenue upwardly front just will create a backlog and show business growth.	Bookings provide a potent validation of the concern in process. Bookings are advisedly watched as an indicator of the growth of the company.
Funnel (weekly)	Dollars/currency	The funnel represents those deals in process, with estimated timelines, probability of closure, and booking value.	Regular reviews with sales offer an opportunity to "do what it takes" to win those high-priority deals. The funnel represents the potential and should help with product decisions that match to specific customer requirements.
Retention, attrition, churn, client lifetime value (monthly)	Number of customers	Churn (negative churn) identifies the loss of customers. Some industries volition likewise track customer lifetime value (CLV) as a measure of loyalty.	Since acquiring a new customer costs significantly more than keeping a client, it's critical to track customers and place why they may be leaving.
Customer counts (monthly)	Number of customers	Number of new customers, number of customers using a certain feature, upsell	Especially important in evaluating growth requirements, number of customers can be significant to your operating capacity (especially in a SaaS environs)
Velocity (monthly to quarterly)	Fourth dimension	Time to revenue, onboarding	Monitor and explore opportunities for the product, or the business model to reduce time to revenue or onboarding time. The shorter the process, the meliorate the human relationship volition exist with customers.
Gross margins, COGS, OCOGS (monthly)	Dollars/currency	The costs associated with developing and delivering the service; COGS includes sales and marketing; OCOGS are strictly associated with creating and delivering the service. Acquisition costs may include technical integration, POCs, and demos.	Gross margins are a calculation of costs over revenues. The company will monitor these carefully for fiscal reporting. Arguably, OCOGS is the strongest metric to be watching for product profitability. This is the cost of operating your product, especially in a SaaS environment.
NPS or CSAT (quarterly to annually)	Number	Net promoter score or the customer satisfaction score are subjective scores from customers with respect to the quality of service from the company.	Should be monitored. As a subjective opinion, take it with a grain of table salt, to exist used simply in conjunction with hard data.
Market position (annually)	Third-party rating	Analysts such every bit Ovum, Forrester Enquiry, IDC, and Gartner will rank your company confronting competitors (east.1000., Gartner Magic Quadrant™).	Equally a corporate goal, PDMs should consider the investment required to gain external industry annotator validation.

Product managers should monitor client related KPIs every bit an indicator of how well the sales and customer success engagements are working. If customer velocity is reducing, then it's critical to understand why. Is information technology a new competitor? Is it a pricing issue? Is information technology a customer communications/expectation issue? If customers are leaving (churn or attrition) and so a deep dive should immediately ensue to explore remediation activities.

A rapid increment in growth tin can lead to a discussion most market share, pricing increases, and new investments in the growth of the product line. Rapid growth can bear upon the performance of your operating environments, specially in a SaaS environment every bit it relates to COGS and OCOGS. Do you take enough capacity? Is Back up sufficiently staffed? Is Customer Success able to handle the book of customers? Are trends showing that y'all need to deed immediately to prepare for the additional overhead?

Unexpected changes should prompt investigation.

When because financial or revenue forecasting and planning, detect out about seasonal implications. These might include a need for "use it or lose it" budget situations at the end of the financial year. Most companies close their year in December. Consider March break every bit a down time and summer as a slow-downward time for many businesses equally people accept vacations. Year over year comparisons will evidence those trends. Plan product releases, launches, and announcements with those considerations in heed.

Product Usage KPIs

Production usage KPIs will assistance to identify how the product is perceived and used. It will help drive roadmap decisions relating to cardinal characteristic functionality and user experience (UX). Create the tracking mechanisms within your applications to empathize behavior as a tool for continuous improvement. Rail often and study trending over a period of time.

Product Usage KPIs

KPI	Measure out	Clarification	Opportunity
Users (monthly)	Detached individuals	Arrangement users (logins)	Volume of users per customer is useful in understanding adoption trends. This is also useful for planning growth and ensuring the environment can scale reliably as the volumes increase.
Users per feature or transaction volumes (weekly to monthly)	Discrete individuals or API phone call counts	Characteristic usage tracked past triggers within the software	Feature usage can place success or failure of a characteristic launch or a marketing or sales campaign.
Time to X (monthly)	Seconds or minutes	Time counts can identify quality of operation of onboarding, downloading, abandonment, and transaction completion	Having accurate records of time functions can be used to promote highly performant messaging to clients. Tedious performance volition drive up support costs.

Utilise the product usage KPIs to identify potential customers that might churn due to performance bug. Monitor these KPIs to accost situations before they become escalated bug. A program of continuous improvement volition leverage these KPIs to demonstrate success.

Product Development KPIs

Production development KPIs help with identifying process improvements, velocity, and speed of development. Monitoring and sharing the results from the squad tin can create new energy and competitiveness.

Product Evolution KPIs

KPI	Measure	Description	Opportunity
Delivery on time (each release)	Days	Tracking operation against commitments. With a focus on applied science, this helps the squad to be more accurate in their development and testing estimates.	Work with Project Management to keep this information visible to the engineering and product direction teams. Your reputation and theirs volition depend on the integrity of the plan. Take hold of gaps quickly, adjust with data, and communicate appropriately if there will exist a customer touch on.
Team velocity (runway for accurateness, employ for each planning session)	Units of work over time; story points	The team velocity is calculated by counting the number of units of work completed in a certain interval, (many companies plan 2-week sprints). For example, if the team completed x stories during a two-week sprint and each story was worth three story points, so the velocity is xxx story points per dart.	Team velocity is a useful metric for estimating how long it will take a team to complete a software development projection. With continuous reporting and monitoring of this metric, product managers and applied science managers can validate engineering science estimates confronting their proven history. This provides for more accurate fourth dimension estimates and more than reliable roadmaps.
Resource availability (ongoing)	Hours or man-days	Track critical resources	Monitoring your disquisitional resources will assistance with resource planning against roadmap requirements.

It'southward important to work with the engineering leads to hold on appropriate KPIs and to share them with the squad. KPIs tin can form a basis for recognizing achievements, managing team size, or identifying areas for improvement.

Product Quality KPIs

Product quality KPIs will identify trends and risks in delivering an boggling customer feel. Product managers should consider tradeoffs in quality against delivery timelines, keeping in mind that a single failure plant past a single client tin can have a profound impact on the business organisation. As more than customers leverage social networking to share their displeasure, quality KPIs should be loftier on the priority list.

Product Quality KPIs

KPI	Measure	Description	Opportunity
Support tickets/escalations (weekly)	Number of days; quantity of tickets; severity of escalation	Number of client calls, tweets, chats, and blog complaints; severity of calls; time to fix; outstanding bugs	Closely monitor Support's touch on on production quality. With an overall goal of excellence, this is a critical set of KPIs.
Testing (each dart)	Automation percent, number of tests completed successfully	Testing KPIs can cover several areas from automation coverage reports to unit testing, system testing, and feature testing	Work closely with the testing team and engineering teams to validate the quality of the product and create goals effectually continuous improvement.

Production quality tin form a validation of the quality of the engineering organization. Properly used, KPIs can create a foundation for continuous improvement, reduction in testing, automation, and overall improved customer experience.

Cross-functional Collaboration

When building relationships with other organizations within the company, recognize that they also accept KPIs. Many of those are shared (due east.g., revenues, customers, usage, etc.). For production managers with goals effectually coming together analysts' comparisons (eastward.thou., Gartner Magic Quadrant), working with Marketing to promote positive results tin support the competitive marketplace positioning needs. The foundation may start with customers that are loving the product (usage is increasing), which improves the brand (a marketing KPI). This could turn into a customer success story, exist used with analysts to drive farther brand recognition, or tin be tied to word-of-mouth qualified pb generation.

Identification of negative trends tin can atomic number 82 to mitigation plans that will remediate the situation as a squad. For instance, if Finance identifies that renewals revenues are dropping off, Product Management tin coordinate with Marketing to create a sales renewals entrada around a new (or upcoming) functionality to address the state of affairs. In this scenario, not only does the renewal (acquirement) challenge get resolved, but Production Direction can identify potential MVP or beta users to examination and promote new functionality.

Understanding how product management KPIs fit with each organization'due south goals can create synergies to drive successful relationships. A regular cadency of communications with the rest of the organizations tin can help with early identification of opportunities to improve. Hither are a few discussion topics where other departments may exist involved when certain trends are identified.

Cross-functional KPIs

Team	KPIs	Opportunity for Discussion
Marketing	Atomic number 82 generation/brand recognition, get-to-marketplace readiness	Client acquisition costs, conversion rates, target markets, routes to marketplace (directly and/or channel), competition, ROI tools, demos, proofs of concept (POCs), sales enablement, analyst relations (AR), public relations (PR), events, collateral, white papers, customer use cases, webinars, customer relationship management (CRM) tools, social networking, website, eCommerce integrations, customer advisory board. Brand can be positively impacted by analysts such as Ovum, Forrester Research, IDC, and Gartner, who will rank your visitor against competitors (e.g., Gartner Magic Quadrant™)
Sales, Systems Engineering science	Revenues, client lifetime value (CLV)	Routes to market (direct or channel), compensation, partnering, inside sales, wholesale and directly sales, demos and proofs of concept (POCs), renewals, monthly and annual recurring revenues
Finance & Operations	Quote to cash, margins	Investment resource allotment, revenue recognition, guild processing, SKU management, discounting, refunding, currency management, reporting (revenues, margins, forecasting, planning), renewals
Manufacturing	Compliance, quality	Volume builds, forecasting, sourcing, packaging, shipping, return merchandising authorizations (RMAs), compliance certifications, localization, export controls
Support	Churn, response times, net promoter scores (NPS)	Customer and field training, call center readiness, RMA readiness, localization
Customer Success	Customer satisfaction (NPS), CLV	Training, use example development, ROI modeling and customer auditing, customer liaison
Legal	Litigation, chance avoidance, contracts	Contracting, license/subscription agreements, export controls, gamble direction (incl. security, intellectual belongings rights (IPR) protections/patents, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), liabilities), mergers and acquisitions, supplier/original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreements
Network, Operations	Service availability, uptimes	Provisioning/entitlement and operations, multi-tenancy, performance, reliability, scalability, availability, security (including GDPR and AB365 compliance, admission controls, encryption), high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR), geographic localization, audit, and logging

Communicate Oftentimes and Consistently

As the eye point to the overall production business, a production manager has the unique opportunity to influence and bulldoze success for the company with clear communications. Explore the following business scenarios and consider which functioning metrics will create the best positive impact when communicated regularly.

Communicating KPIs

Coming together or Purpose	Communications Goal	Which Product Management KPIs
Hallway discussions	Reinforce your credibility. Share data with pride, and requite credit where credit is due. Reinforce teamwork.	Choice from the business performance and product quality highlights to share.
Weekly squad meetings	Gloat successes and build trust and integrity with product direction and engineering.	Share KPIs that they specifically participated in—crossing all categories, but primarily in product usage, product evolution, and quality.
Monthly or quarterly ops reviews	Demonstrate your leadership and understanding of the corporate goals.	Mensurate and study KPIs that are agreed upon with senior leadership—focus on business KPIs relating to COGS, OCOGS, release timelines/roadmap, and specific efforts effectually strategic accounts, sales support, and MVPs.
Escalations	Go hard data to escalate risks and develop clear plans.	Historical and trending KPIs will help to identify anomalies before they get tragedies.

Summary: Use KPIs for Clear Communications

Ambiguity is the bane of whatever communications. Exactly how bad is it? How great was information technology? What are the facts? Creating a data-driven foundation helps to eliminate fuzzy conversations and creates definitive, articulate communications. An informed product managing director volition have their finger on the pulse of the business operation, product evolution, production quality and product usage KPIs that are the foundation of a well operation business.

The opportunity for product direction teams to drive a business lies in the cognition, based on real information, of how the key factors of the product and business are running over fourth dimension. Pick the top five or ten KPIs—monitor them religiously and repeat them at every opportunity.

Past continuously communicating successes and dealing chop-chop with negative results, the surprises and challenges that always come with the job of a product director will be minimized. Knowledge is power, and production direction KPIs allow production managers to own success. Skills in getting this right can make or pause a company.

Understanding the nuts

A KPI is a measure of performance. Information technology counts activities, revenues, costs, usage, or other measures that inform decisions. Production managers will utilise KPI data to monitor success or failure in product or business organization goals. KPIs can also identify changes which might require an immediate change in concern direction.

Product managers will choose KPIs that encounter specific performance goals or those of the company. This may include customer performance, product usage, production evolution or financial performance indicators. Production managers volition monitor 5-six KPIs regularly and select others to monitor for specific situations.

Popular visitor performance indicators include revenues, profits, and the number of customers. Measured over time, the speed of growth is of import in identifying investment opportunities to farther accelerate visitor success. Conversely, unexpected negative changes should warrant immediate investigation.

Important product performance indicators include on-time delivery, quality, back up, usability, and customer adoption. With a civilization of continuous improvement, most product managers will look for ways to increase revenues, loyalty, and usability to drive an increasing customer lifetime value (CLV).

The production management function defines taking a concept and turning it into reality. They are responsible for the success of their product(s). The role spans coordinating with every stakeholder in the organization from the client who will buy or use it to the entire corporate organization.

The product management process is all-time viewed from the customer journey. A product manager is responsible for optimizing each touchpoint with a customer or prospect to ensure a positive experience. The success of those touchpoints will bulldoze the success of the product, which in plough defines company success.

Product direction owns the success of the product. Production managers motivate and inspire unabridged organizations to reach the tasks required to go a product to market. They are experienced, professional managers. They are key decision makers; their decisions must be credible and understood past all stakeholders.