Explaining Product Management to a 5-year-old child
Product management is always a complex and multi-faceted career concept. But what if we try to make it as simple as possible to understand?
What is Product Management?
Product management plays a crucial role in many companies, guiding the development, launch, and ongoing improvement of a product. A product manager (PM) ensures that a product meets customer needs, aligns with business goals to be viable, and stands out in the market. This involves strategic planning, communication, problem-solving and many more. However, I usually struggle to explain this career concept to people outside the tech industry. Therefore, I attempt to convey this concept as if I am explaining it to a 5-year-old child.
This is Year I/Craft 8 note with my attempt to explain it in a simple way. You can find my other notes below.
The Role of a Product Manager
A product manager's job can be broken down into several key responsibilities:
Identifying Customer Needs: Understanding what customers want and need, even if they can't articulate it themselves.
Strategic Planning: Setting the vision and roadmap for the product, deciding what features to build and when.
Collaboration: Working with various teams, including engineering, design, marketing, and sales, to bring the product to life.
Market Analysis: Keeping an eye on market trends and competitors to ensure the product remains relevant.
Problem Solving: Addressing any issues that arise during the product's lifecycle, from development bugs to customer complaints.
Explaining Product Management to a 5-Year-Old
We can use simple analogies to make this concept understandable for a young child. Here are a few ways to explain product management to a 5-year-old:
The Candy Analogy
Imagine you have a box of candies of many kinds, including chocolate, but your friends have never tried chocolate before. Assuming one day, your friends Barbara (B is for Business) and Ulrich (U is for User) come to your house and play. You love them so much that you decide to give them a piece of chocolate. A product manager's job is like giving Barbara and Ulrich a piece of chocolate to try. If your friends love it, you will make sure there's always chocolate available for your friends to enjoy. You don’t keep your candy box alone; you always care to ask which flavour Barbara or Ulrich loves. If they do not like chocolate, you can always try to find other flavours to make them happy and stay, because they are really your good friends and you think for them.
Ulrich, Barbara, and you are always good friends.
The Chef Analogy
Imagine you are a chef in a big kitchen. Your job is to come up with a new recipe for a delicious dish. You need to ensure you have all the right ingredients and work with other chefs to cook the dish perfectly. Once the dish is ready, you serve it to people and see if they like it. If they don't, you figure out how to make it better next time.
The Parent Analogy
Think of yourself as a product and your mom as the product manager. Your mom wakes you up, helps you get dressed, ensures you eat breakfast, and sends you to school. She also makes sure you stay healthy and happy. If something goes wrong, like if you get sick, she takes care of you and ensures it doesn't happen again. Just like your mom takes care of you, a product manager takes care of a product to make sure it works well and makes people happy.
Parting Thoughts
Product management is always a complex and multi-faceted career concept. However, keeping it as simple and neat as necessary is not hard. The Human mind usually tries to make things complicated, for the more things are complicated, the more we think we are intellectual. We want things to be complicated and frightened to be simple.