Technical problems need modern solutions, which is why companies rely on product managers to understand their products and effectively market them to customers. Although product managers play a crucial role in product development, businesses still need technical product managers with technical expertise. Consequently, in this article, you will get to know what is a technical product manager, their job responsibilities, and every other aspect related to it.
What is a Technical Product Manager?
Generally, technical managers are product managers with a strong technical background in the product and know all its aspects. They work closely with the engineering team rather than the business, sales, and marketing areas of an organization. Often, former computer scientists and engineers sink their teeth into such technical areas and like to work on product development and management.
The technical background of product managers can help in improving coordination over cross-functional teams and developing business requirements. Moreover, they review the technical specifications of the product and assess whether the engineering estimates are correct or not. According to a survey, an average technical product manager’s salary is approximately $117,000 annually.
Technical Product Manager Job Description
Technical product managers have a similar job to product managers, but the key difference is the focus on the more technical side of products. They work closely with the product development team and are less focused on customer’s needs. To better understand what a technical product manager does, you can delve into the detailed job description written below:
- Understand customer needs to transform them into requirements.
- Facilitate the maintenance of product documentation.
- Identify and define the success criteria for product acceptance.
- Capability of working with internal teams, including engineers, architects, developers, operations, and quality assurance.
- Deeply understand research and able to follow technical trends in the industry. Access emerging products to measure their potential value and threat to companies’ products.
- Able to utilize database queries to examine performance indicators.
- Keep track of competitors and conduct capability analysis regularly.
- Proves to be a product evangelist who must be an expert in technical subject matters and the developer community.
- Provide internal and external training and workshops on how to effectively use a product.
- Analyze algorithms, data pipelines, and automated systems.
- Timely assess technical risks and able to excellently manage them.
- Know how to deal with the questions about product and their capabilities.
Duties and Responsibilities of Technical Product Manager
The job description of a technical product manager looks similar to a product manager, but companies look for a certain experience that differentiates both. Notably, depending on the product size and breadth, companies hire a product manager or technical product manager. Subsequently, technical PM job descriptions might vary, but they perform the same duties and responsibilities explained in the given section.
1. Conduct Market Research
A significant part of a technical product manager’s job is to research the product, but they spend less time interviewing customers while doing so. Since they have a technical background, they understand the suggestions of teams and translate them well to the stakeholders. For instance, if the engineering team suggests removing a feature from a product, they research whether it should be removed or not.
2. Manage the Product Vision
Once the owner creates product ideas, it gets handed over to the technical product manager to bring life into that product vision. They address the concerns related to the blueprints of the product and assess the product backlog to remove confusion. In this regard, they clarify any gray areas in products to save them from becoming time-consuming and costly.
3. Create Product Roadmap
It’s the toughest part of the job, where managers create the roadmap for building a product depending on the product vision. Technical product managers design the tasks each team and employee will execute along with the deadlines. While planning, they also consider the overall impact of such a plan on business objectives.
4. Assess and Manage Risk
There is always some risk in developing products that pose threats to companies. When such roadblocks pop up and timelines continue to delay, businesses spend a heavy amount to tackle the issues. In such cases, technical product managers jobs cheer up teams and proactively devise sustainable solutions. It all depends on the operating style of the manager who anticipates and handles problems well.
5. Collaborate with Product Owner and Team Leads
Throughout the development of products, technical product managers are responsible for communicating with the product owners and team leaders regularly. Moreover, they provide regular updates about product vision and ensure that all the tasks are processed smoothly. Clear communication among roles involved in the process results in the efficient development of products.
How to Become a Technical Product Manager
Hiring a technical product manager means increasing efficacy and a smoother product development cycle. Technical product manager jobs require technical industry experience rather than having a similar degree to get highly paid. To start a career in this field, you need to pick specific educational paths and skill sets. Thus, read this part and make a plan to enter the technical product manager role:
1. Qualification Required to be a Technical Product Manager
The primary thing you should consider entering the technical product manager role is a bachelor’s degree. You should consider an educational background in Computer Sciences, Information Technology, Engineering, and Software Development. Online courses can prove a plus point during technical product manager interview questions.
2. Prerequisites for a Technical Product Manager Posts
Besides having a bachelor’s degree in technical niche, you are asked to show at least two years of technical position experience. To get experience, you can start by joining related internships and performing design-specific responsibilities during that tenure. If you are already a product manager but want to get into technical product management, build new products like micro-SaaS as side projects.
3. Hard skills
Gain hard skills highly in demand for product management, such as research skills for analyzing market trends and user-product interactions. In addition, try to learn to become an expert in the company’s product components and features. To gain such technical skills, you can take certification to get familiar with common software development techniques and tools.
4. Soft Skills
Some prominent qualities of a technical product manager that companies strive to find are time management and communication skills. Managers must show a thoughtful approach to product design while complying with ethical and legal standards. For this purpose, you should attend hackathons and meetups to embed hard and soft skills in you.
Best Collaborate Tool for Technical Product Manager
Being a technical product manager, you might be familiar with product roadmap software, documentation tools, and programming tools. Notably, if you want to implement best practices in your field, you should also explore Docuo, which can prove your AI assistant. Furthermore, it can assist managers in keeping the team updated with organized documentation and cross-team collaboration features. This way, you can easily track progress and maintain previous project data to ensure workflow.
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