Product management is a huge industry, but defining the responsibilities and processes within this role can be tricky—especially if you're just starting out.

Let's go over the key steps of the product management process together as well as some tips and tricks to become the best product manager possible.

What is product management?

Product management is one of the most important roles in the product industry, and one of the most involved and lengthy ones too. Product managers oversee the growth of a product from an idea to an end product, and plays a vital role in shaping and guiding that product's journey. In product management, you need to be able to create and lead product strategy and unify all of the teams working on your product, including sales teams, marketing teams and development teams.

What is a product manager?

Product management is done by product managers. While project managers are responsible for the product development process, product managers are responsible for leading all of the product teams throughout the product's lifecycle and all iterations.

Product managers are responsible for setting the product's direction and translating user needs into easily-defined product goals and objectives. This means the role can be research-heavy at times, and it places heavy emphasis on communication, too. Product managers will need to be able to listen to and communicate with customers to keep users happy and be successful once you have brought the product to market.

While the term itself can be hard to define, product managers need to have refined product sense. This means knowing when changes are necessary, such as moving testing stages or adding and removing product features. PMs are also the ones who create the product roadmap and define and prioritize features for development within the product backlog.

Product managers are responsible for the financial side of the product as well, especially when managing the profits and losses.

The product management process in 6 steps

Now, let's break down the product management process into steps.

Idea sourcing and development

The first step in product management is developing your idea, which will in turn allow you to define your product vision. This product vision is vital for your product journey, and will help define what your final product looks like. 

Often, a product vision is developed over several brainstorming sessions, where a product manager sets the goals for the product and its specifications. As a product of these sessions, a good product vision will define user stories, industry gaps and problems to tackle, and how to measure product success.

Product visions are best kept short, like elevator pitches for your product. You need to be able to easily articulate what your product does and why people should use it.

Market research and audience research

Market research is key in product development. The process of collecting and analyzing your industry and audience can help you figure out how to market your product and what to prioritize in development. This includes details on your competitors, industry trends, and how others in your industry connect and work. Often, a product manager will work in tandem with a project manager in order to gather these details.

Likewise, knowing your potential customers will help you figure out who your target audience will be and how best to bring in users. Often, this is done by creating user stories—that is, templates of customers that share similarities, whether that be user behaviour, common problems, or age range and occupations. Knowing their needs and desires can make your product more attractive.

Both market research and audience research can help you identify opportunities for improvement and deal with risks before they become larger issues.

Strategy development

Now that you've defined your product vision and analyzed your industry and potential audience, it's time to develop your product strategy. While previous steps have helped you set goals for your product, the strategy stage will help you figure out how to achieve those goals and how to measure your progress.

Your product will need a clear and realistic plan for success. Effective product strategies define the main features of your product, the audience you aim to target and their needs, and the KPIs your product must meet to achieve success.

Often, your product strategy will be showcased in a roadmap, which serves as a visual guide to all future steps for your product. These steps are generally separated into three categories—in progress, up next, and completed—though there are many different roadmap types you can customize to better fit your team and product.

Your roadmap should discuss several key points: what your business goals are, what product areas and features you want to focus on, what key performance indicators (KPIs) you plan on using to measure, and what order each feature will be implemented in.

This roadmap will also help you figure out what features to prioritize in your product development journey. These will likely be the ones that your customers are most excited about or will have the biggest impact on your product.

Creation, testing and feedback gathering

So you've finalized your product, done your market research, and planned out your product strategy. Now it's time to for your development team to build your product, test it, and gather feedback.

This stage can be the most difficult and lengthy stage of product development. You may have to go back to the drawing board several different times, or rethink your approach entirely.

Once you have a minimum viable product (or MVP), it's time to test your prototype out. Often, this is done with the help of focus groups, personal interviews, A/B testing, or other methods of external testing and feedback. Your goal for this testing is to make sure that the MVP serves its purpose and meets the needs of your audience.

The feedback you get in this stage is key. It will help let you know if your potential audience is having any issues or if your product is still struggling to find product-market fit, both of which are necessary for a successful product. Take this feedback and use it to refine and better your product until you're satisfied that your product is ready for launch.

Launch, marketing and sales

Once you've completed your product and have it ready for market, it's time to launch.

This stage is where marketing is the most vital. By now, you should have a marketing plan already in place and ready to implement in order to build customer awareness and bring in new users. All of your content should be SEO-optimized and targeted and you should have your ads ready for release as well.

The product manager's role during this stage is to deliver and oversee the operating plan for your product, which will help it grow and gain success in your industry. Depending on the size of your company, some other responsibilities may include writing use cases, defining your pricing strategy and distribution models, and figuring out sales supports.

Constant product improvement

Your job isn't done now that your product has launched. In order to survive, scale and grow, your product will have to continuously adapt and optimize itself. Product development and management aren't linear, and flexibility is key.

Once again, customer feedback is an incredibly important resource for your business at this stage. Listening to what your customers have to say will help you figure out what's working and what you may need to change.

The best practices for product management

Here are some of our best tips for product management.

Understand company goals

Product managers are vital to their companies, and as such, they need to be deeply familiar with their company's goals and objectives. Everyone needs to be on the same page on the product vision, but this is even more important for those who help guide your product's journey and keep everything working smoothly.

You'll need to know exactly what your company wants to accomplish and how it aims to do it, as well as how you're doing to do it. Likewise, you'll also need to have a plan for tracking and measuring your success, which is often done through metrics.

Track metrics

Metrics and KPIs are a great way to measure your company's success and catch issues before they become larger problems. Having a clear system for tracking progress will help you become a better product manager and give your product a head start.

Court customer feedback

Your customers are one of the best resources you have at your disposal as a product manager. Listening to their thoughts and opinions will help you create a better product and find more success in the industry. They can tell you what features they want to see in your product, and what's missing or needs to be fixed.

Plus, involving users in your decision-making can help them feel heard and included, which in turn can turn them into loyal customers.

One of the best ways to manage customer feedback is with the use of a feedback management platform like UserVitals. UserVitals helps you bring in information from all around the web—including from custom feedback portals and widgets on your site as well as through integrations and a Google Chrome extension—so you can view it all together on your dashboard. Each individual piece of feedback or Insight can be viewed by itself or grouped together into Stories based on type, source, or whatever else works best for you and your team.

Looking at your customer feedback like this can help you notice patterns and higher-level themes in what your customers are telling you that you might not have noticed otherwise. Your Stories can also help you build, prioritize and publish a public roadmap to help keep everyone in the loop with what's coming next.

Learn more about UserVitals today.

Stay open-minded

One of the worst things you can do in any industry is to limit yourself. Project management is an ongoing process, and there's no one point where you can stop learning or growing your skills. You'll always have something to learn about the industry or the people around you, and thinking otherwise can hurt your abilities.

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