Product Manager Competencies Map + Skills Assessment

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Product Manager Competencies Map + Skills Assessment

In today’s newsletter:

1. Product Management Skills

2. Product Management Skills Required by Role

3. Product Management Skills Assessment

4. Product Manager Competencies Map

5. The Next Steps

Let's dive in!

1. Product Management Skills

I’ve broken down Product Management into eight categories:

Next, I’ll dive into what you need to know and share recommended resources.

1.1 Business and Strategy

The key product management skills:

Strategy is a set of choices that help you win in your chosen market. It defines the vision, market, value proposition, tradeoffs, and growth model, among others. It should be hard for competitors to copy.

You should understand:

• What strategy is, and what it's not.

• Models like SWOT, PESTLE, and Porter's Five Forces.

• Market size metrics like TAM, SAM, and SOM.

• How to make a business model to outline how your company will make money. This is often done with Business Model Canvas or Lean Model Canvas.

Resources:

• Product Vision, Strategy, Goals, and Roadmap: The Advanced Edition

• Product Strategy Canvas

• How to Achieve Product-Market Fit? Part I: Market and Value Proposition

• Market Research: Advanced Techniques

1.2 Execution

The key product management skills:

Execution is the stage where strategy turns into action.

You should understand:

• Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for setting goals and measuring outcomes.

• Techniques for prioritizing, making decisions, and managing risks.

• Approaches like Agile, Lean, and DevOps.

Resources:

• OKRs 101 + Advanced Techniques

• 3 Ways to Create 10X Better Product Roadmaps

• Business vs. Product vs. Customer vs. Desired Outcomes

• Prioritization and Decision-Making Frameworks in The Products Framework Compendium

• Agile Frameworks in The Product Frameworks Compendium

1.3 People

The key product management skills:

Leadership involves inspiring, influencing, and guiding others without authority.

As a leader, you should understand how to:

• Inspire with the vision.

• Lead with strategic context so that team members understand why the work is important and how it aligns with the strategy. It allows them to make better autonomous decisions.

• Build a culture based on trust and psychological safety.

• Get buy-in and resolve conflicts.

Resources:

• The Product Leadership Playbook

• Product Vision vs Strategy vs Goals vs Roadmap (related)

• Team Topologies: A Handbook to Set and Scale Product Teams

• Agile Leadership. How I’ve Wasted 3 Years of My PM Career

1.4 Data Analytics

The key product management skills:

Data analytics is the backbone of data-driven product management.

You should know:

• Frameworks like the North Star Framework and One Metric That Matters so that you can focus on just a few key metrics.

• Other techniques like customer segmentation, funnel analysis, heatmaps, and session recordings to get additional insights into user behavior.

• How to read the data and extract the essential insights.

Data analytics is a concept broader than product analytics and includes analyzing data from other sources (e.g., CRM, transactional data).

Resources:

• The North Star Framework 101

• Are You Tracing the Right Metrics?

• The Ultimate List of Product Metrics

• Product Analytics Certification Course

1.5 Product Discovery

The key product management skills:

Product Discovery is the most critical area for a Product Manager.

You should know how to:

• Explore the Problem Space to understand and define opportunities (problems, needs, desires),

• Explore the Solution Space to brainstorm possible solutions, formulate testable assumptions, and plan experiments to prove or disprove those assumptions.

• Identify high-risk assumptions about value, usability, feasibility, viability, and ethics to tackle them before implementation.

• Work with both new and existing products.

Resources:

• What exactly is Product Discovery?

• Continuous Product Discovery 101

• Continuous Product Discovery Masterclass

• User Interviews: The Ultimate Guide to Research Interviews

• User Journey Mapping 101

1.6 Experimentation

The key product management skills:

Experimentation is crucial for validating assumptions.

You should know:

• Different kinds of MVP Prototypes (or “Pretotypes”) help you validate product ideas at an early stage, in particular, market engagement hypotheses.

• User prototypes and how to use them in experiments like first-click testing, card sorting, 5-second tests, and more to assess the value and usability of specific features.

• Other methods like A/B testing and multivariate resting to get statistical data on how changes affect your metrics.

Resources:

• The Ultimate Validation Experiments Library

• MVP: Everything You Need to Know

• Building the Right Product with Alberto Savoia

• A/B Testing 101

• Jobs-to-be-Done Masterclass with Tony Ulwick and Sabeen Sattar

1.7 Product Marketing

The key product management skills:

The role of a Product Marketer (or Product Marketing Manager, PMM for short) varies across companies. However, the best product companies:

“While the product manager focuses on the product side of the equation, the product marketer focuses o the market side, including the go-to-market strategy” - Martina Lauchengco, Loved

You should understand:

• How to communicate your product's value.

• How to prepare and execute a go-to-market.

• How to enable sales and partners to spread the word.

Resources:

• Product Management vs. Product Marketing vs. Product Growth

• The Secrets of Copywriting

1.8 Product Growth

The key product management skills:

Product Growth focuses on scaling the product and gaining wider adoption.

You should know:

• How product-led growth combines sales, marketing, onboarding, and support, all led by the product.

• Terms like Time to Value (TTV) and the "Aha moment."

• How to enhance onboarding using the Bowling Alley Framework.

• Different pricing models, their differences, advantages, and disadvantages.

Resources:

• Time to Value and The Bowling Alley Framework

• Product Pricing Strategies 101

• Product Management vs. Product Marketing vs. Product Growth

• Product-led Certification Course

• The North Star Framework 101

2. Product Management Skills Required by Role

My assessment of the required competencies comes from interviewing over 200 product professionals via video calls in the past year, plus my 10+ years of experience in product.

Keep in mind that results can vary a lot depending on the organization.

3. Product Management Skills Assessment

Below, you'll find a link to a graded skills assessment with 32 questions from each of those product management areas:

1. Strategy and Business (4 points)

2. Execution (4 points)

3. People (4 points)

4. Data Analytics (4 points)

5. Product Discovery (4 points)

6. Experimentation (4 points)

7. Product Marketing (4 points)

8. Product Growth (4 points)

Take the test, check your knowledge, get feedback, and keep on learning: https://forms.gle/NimGpmWRWEDKbaHi8

[Edit 1/14/2024] A score distribution after getting 1,428 responses:

4. Product Manager Competencies Map

An interactive document: https://xmind.works/share/PnDamsJH

Please note that this is a living document. I'll be adding more information, resources, and clickable links soon.

5. The Next Steps

🎯 Starting now, skill assessments will be a regular feature in this newsletter. My goal for the next 12 months is to increase your market value by 30% as a PM.

At least once a month, you can:

• Test your knowledge,

• Identify areas for improvement,

• Get recommended learning materials.

Premium subscribers can also reach out to me on Slack. Feel free to discuss doubts, ask questions, and get personalized advice. I'll even review your resume.

Upgrade your account, if you haven’t already, to get a full experience:

If you have any ideas on what I can improve, I’m happy to listen: pawel@productcompass.pm

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Thanks for reading The Product Compass

It’s incredible to learn and grow together 👊😊

Have a fabulous weekend and a fantastic week ahead,

Paweł