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Perfect product manager - what are the qualities?

PostPosted: Mon May 10, 2010 12:39 am
by akw
I'm curious to know what qualities people see in their best product managers.

Re: Perfect product manager - what are the qualities?

PostPosted: Thu May 13, 2010 7:53 pm
by cadman_chui
Good product managers are extremely hard to find. The key is balance. The perfect candidate will have the right mix of technical, marketing, business, and interpersonal skills to get the job done.

Technical skill: Ensure that the candidate has enough of a technical background to understand the technology that he / she is representing. All too often I've come across PM's that have a cursory amount of technical understanding and fall short in this respect, which leads to problems and credibility problems with development.

Marketing skill: If the candidate is a technical PM (and you have Product Marketing Managers in your organization), this may be less of an issue, however a standard PM candidate should have the presentation, communication, writing, and technical-to-marketing translation skills to guide and assist Marcom in all marketing materials creation.

Business skill: The candidate should be able to put together comprehensive business plans for each product line, including financial modeling, forecasting.

Interpersonal / organization / leadership skill: A PM is the 'hub' of sales, marketing, development, support when it comes to the product lines so getting along with all departments and getting them all together for the betterment of the product line is a must.

Hope this helps,


Cadman.