Actions in product management cascade from strategic to tactical. The whole process of product management involves:

• Vision development
• Customer understanding
• Execution and testing
• Marketing and sales
• Metrics tracking

Vision development

Product vision is a significant part of product management. If we were to compare product management to a road, the vision is both a road sign and a destination. It defines the final product and shows the direction towards achieving it. It’s not a strategy of product development yet, but this is where the strategy development starts with idea management when a team discusses a new product.

Market research and customer understanding

Market research is a process of information collection and analysis of the market and its present or potential customers. It comprises comparing similar products that already exist, studying the competition, and identifying target customer groups. Obviously, knowing your customer is a basis for creating a successful product. 76 percent of consumers expect companies to understand their needs. Moreover, 84 percent of companies that focused on improving customer experience reported a revenue increase.

Execution and testing

During the execution stage, a product team works on the product itself. They build a new product or add new features to an existing one. Main phases of this stage are product development, internal and external testing, and the application of feedback results. All along the execution stage, a product manager controls the implementation of the roadmap and participates in accompanying activities.

Marketing and Sales

Once the product is completed, it’s time for it to enter the market. At this stage, marketing and launch plans have to be finalized, and the sales teams trained to start distribution. The 3 important aspects of a successful product launch are:

• Building customer awareness with the help of various marketing campaigns and promotional activities
• Defining pricing strategy based on the product’s value and market competition.
• Choosing the most effective release timing considering customer readiness, performance of other existing products, competitors’ launches, etc.

Tracking product metrics

After the product launch, the product manager monitors its progression and analyzes data to understand the success of a product. We have a detailed article dedicated to the key product management metrics and KPIs. These metrics can be organized into several main groups:

• The financial metrics for identifying revenue, such as monthly recurring revenue that shows the revenue related to the product in one month
• Metrics reflecting user engagement, like session duration that measures how long the product was used
• Metrics demonstrating user interest, i.e, retention rate that calculates the number of consumers who stayed loyal to the company after a certain period of time