Product Manager Jobs in Nigeria

Who is a product manager?

Product management is a function of an organization that involves guiding teams on a product's lifecycle, from development to execution, by focusing on exactly what (potential) customers want. While product managers are champions of the product, they also understand the competitive landscape, learn about its users, and devise new solutions for improvement. 

A product manager is a professional who defines the strategy, roadmap, features, and success of a product. They help set goals and motivate the product team of engineers, designers, marketers, and researchers, with the primary concern of ensuring that a product launches and continues to do well in the market.

Responsibilities of a product manager

• Defines the product vision, strategy and roadmap.

• Gathers, manages, and prioritizes market/customer requirements.

• Acts as the customer advocate articulating the user’s and/or buyer’s needs.

• Works closely with engineering, sales, marketing, and support to ensure business case and customer satisfaction goals are met.

• Has technical product knowledge or specific domain expertise.

• Defines what to solve in the market needs document, where you articulate the valuable market problem you’re solving along with priorities and justification for each part of the solution.

• Runs beta and pilot programs during the qualify phase with almost final products and samples. In Agile environments, regularly reviews completed work and checks with customers to ensure that it meets the customer expectations.

• Is a market expert. Market expertise includes understanding the reasons customers purchase products. This includes a deep understanding of the competition, and how customers think of and buy your product. Product Managers need market research and competitive analysis skills to complete these tasks.

• Acts as the product’s leader within the company.

• Develops the business case for new products, improvements to existing products, and business ventures.

• Develops positioning for the product.

• Recommends or contributes information in setting product pricing. This point isn’t true in all industries, especially, for example, insurance; however, an awareness of competitive pricing is part of what companies expect you to provide as part of the pricing decision.

Skills of a product manager

1. Product Development Processes: A concrete understanding of the role and product development processes and frameworks is essential. Before finessing the interpersonal dynamics of working with a product development team, product managers must be able to speak their language, comprehend the expectations, and know the scope of their job versus that of project managers, UX professionals, architects, and the like.

2. Pricing Principles: Product managers also need a solid understanding of fundamental business and economic policies. Pricing often falls on their shoulders. If they’re unable to turn the underlying unit economics into a profitable and scalable business, they’ll have a pretty short career.

3. Prioritization: Prioritization is at the core of product management. The most critical part of the job is to assess the relative value and impact of each potential feature, technical debt, project, and initiative, and create a coherent strategy. A cohesive strategy includes being able to say no when the time comes and recognizing the need for a pivot or strategic shift if applicable.

4. Communication: On the softer side, communication lies at the heart of any successful product manager. They must be a cypher and be comfortable speaking with all sorts of people filling different roles. They speak with customers, internal teams, and stakeholders. Product managers must get along with engineers and relate to the perspectives of stakeholders.