The Role of Communication in Product Management
- April 15, 2022
Communication: What makes a Product Manager Stand Out?
You can develop the best product, but if you cannot effectively communicate what it does and how it helps the users, your efforts diminish significantly. Effective communication is perhaps the best gift you can bestow upon your team to help them do a good job.
From your team’s perspective, you need to ensure that they understand what they are developing and why they are doing the same. You need to define requirements and priorities clearly. Creating comprehensive yet straightforward specifications increases the chance of the engineer delivering on time and, as a result, allows you to create a product according to plan.
When it comes to executives, you need to be natural and authentic. Executives want more than facts. They want evidence delivered with conviction and truth. Therefore, communication plays a significant role here. The more effectively you communicate, the better it is for the management to understand the product and make appropriate decisions.
Most product management courses focus on communication as a part of their curriculum. Because a product manager with strong communication skills, be it written or verbal, stands out in the crowd.
But how do you communicate different requirements? Here is a summary.
How to communicate your vision in a product management role?
You want to develop a product that stands out. And to do this, you need to have a vision. What is the vision about? Well, you need to specify who the target audience is. You need to highlight the problem you are solving with the product. And how can you do that?
It’s imperative to develop a concise and precise version of your vision. Write it down in easy and simple words. In doing so, you will be forced to consider each step carefully and if it is commensurate with what you’re trying to achieve.
How to communicate your product design in a product management role?
Much of your time as a product manager is spent designing products. And most of it hinges on interactions with your design team. This is followed by explaining the product design to your engineering team.
When working with your design team, speed of iteration is highly important. And when it comes to communicating finalized product designs to your engineering team, it’s essential to create mock-ups with actual user data and design specs. This will ensure that you provide details on the UI and interaction behavior.
How to communicate day-to-day execution in a product management role?
A product manager’s daily tasks are all about communicating with the different stakeholders to ensure that the end goal of the product is met. You will have to meet the management and update them about the progress made. You will need to talk to the customers and gather their feedback. During the development stage, you will have to conduct market research.
When performing the tasks mentioned above, ensure to be articulate with your speech. Make sure that you use easy and non-technical language. The more complicated your words, the more difficult it is to understand.
Also, when writing the emails, make sure that you clearly state what you are looking for. Keep your tone semi-formal and ensure to make no grammatical errors.
In Conclusion
The daily tasks of a product manager revolve around communicating with other people. Therefore, communication has to be a de-facto skill for a product manager.
These tips will help you improve your communication, further helping you perform the core responsibilities of design, vision, and execution with ease.
The product management certification from IPL focuses on communication. You can opt for the International Certificate in Product Management and start a lucrative career today.