Marketing Career Focus: Product Managment
Each of these Career Focus posts will cover a specific track or specialty track within the MS in Marketing degree program that can lead to the acquisition of many, if not all, the skills needed to successfully enter the career under discussion.
Indeed.com is a good job search site because at a glance it shows you average salaries, years of experience for many mid-level positions, quantity of available jobs, as well as locations. I looked at 10 to 15 job descriptions from major companies and the skills most frequently mentioned at such employers as JCPenney, Verizon, Lennox, AT&T, Citibank, and others. However, there is NO substitute for your doing your own searches and analyses.
MS Marketing – Product Management Specialty Track
In addition to completing the MS in Marketing’s 15 credit hours of core courses, students must complete the remaining 21 credit hours with track courses in new product development, brand management, and pricing analytics along with electives in areas such as technology forecasting, agile development, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Details of the courses in the degree and this track are available at the UT Dallas Graduate Catalog page. The program is designed to prepare students for careers in this field with an emphasis on the business and marketing area vs. the purely technical product side.
What does a product manager do?
In his book, Inspired, Marty Cagan, software engineer and founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group, says the job of the product manager is “to discover a product that is valuable, usable and feasible.”
Martin Eriksson, a 20-year product manager veteran in the U.S. and Europe, describes product management as “the intersection between business, technology and user experience (hint – only a product manager would define himself in a Venn diagram).” He illustrates this relationship with the following graphic:
Business
Product management is a business function focused on getting greater business value from a product. Product managers should therefore focus on optimizing a product to achieve business goals while also increasing return on investment.
Technology
This doesn’t mean a product manager must know coding. However, he or she must understand “the technology stack” and the level of effort involved — this is crucial for making the right decisions. And it’s vital in an Agile world in which product managers spend more time dealing with the development team than with anyone else.
User Experience
Inside the business, the product manager is the voice of the user. He or she must be “passionate about the user experience.” (Martin Eriksson)
Here are some articles recommended by Martin Eriksson to help you understand the role, be an effective product manager and offer products that people love:
- How to Make Products People Love by Marty Cagan
- Focus on the Problem, Not the Solution by Martin Eriksson
- Enter the Matrix – Lean Prioritisation by Andy Wicks
- Why Your Road Map Should be Flexible by Janna Bastow
- 20 Years of Product Management in 25 Minutes by Dave Wascha
Learn more about the MS in Marketing Product Management specialty track
Average years of experience and salary average
For a product manager with three years of experience, salaries in DFW range from $60,000 to $100,000. (Note: job candidates requiring visa sponsorship tend to receive less money. There are not many sponsorship opportunities in this track for international students.)
What is the size of the job market?
“Product Manager” returns 17,804 jobs on Indeed.com. Broadening the search to “Product Management” yields 867,742 jobs —but these tend to be better-paying and at higher levels, such as “Director of Product Management” and “VP of Product Management.”
Typical product manager job description
From a Neiman Marcus posting for a “Product Manager”
Position Summary:
The Neiman Marcus Product Management Team is looking for a skilled Digital Product Manager who is passionate about advocating for the customer, has excellent product instincts, a passion for creating great experiences, a data-centric mindset, agile thinking, and the willingness to challenge the status quo.
The Product Manager will be responsible for supporting the strategy of the Neiman Marcus Group and its digital and technology roadmap. The position will collaborate with business partners, subject matter experts, engineers and vendor partners to establish business and technical requirements and stories ensuring delivery of new features and functionality, as well as optimizations.
Key Responsibilities:
- Partners with senior leaders on program level strategy development and execution.
- Contributes to successful continuous delivery of product roadmaps, within budget and schedule, by identifying risks and developing and recommending mitigation strategies.
- Reviews tactical implications to products or business areas ensuring long-term goals and an enterprise view are represented in requirements.
- Lead and manage a scrum team by setting the priority and communicating a clear vision.
- Creates and analyzes regular and ad hoc reporting to monitor business KPI’s and to measure the effectiveness of product enhancements.
- Troubleshoots and researches issues related to changing trends, behaviors or performance to identify what is impacting the business and determine how to address.
- Builds strong working relationships with teams across the organization and key stakeholders to help facilitate awareness and support of business strategies and initiatives.
- Supports and provides direction to the associate product managers in determining the impact of new functionality to existing business processes and system functionality.
- Ensures the team writes stories (requirements) of sufficient quality in order to provide a solid foundation for realizing the benefits of the project.
- Educates and evangelizes best practices throughout organization to build awareness for impact to business and ensure alignment for cross-team initiatives.
- Maintains market awareness of industry trends and competitive landscape to help identify necessary updates and new opportunities.
- Manages vendor partners to help solve customer and business problems and collaborate to drive for new innovations in products and services that best meet business needs and strategy.
Qualifications:
- Strong strategic, creative thinking and decision-making skills
- Highly organized with the ability to multi-task and prioritize tasks to deliver expected results on time
- Must have extremely strong interpersonal skills and the ability to maintain and develop internal and external relationships; collaborating across multiple business and technology functions, relationship building and consensus building are essential
- Self-motivated and results-oriented individual able to work independently and also work collaboratively with a team
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to interact with all levels of the organization and communicate with technical and non-technical audience
Education and Work History Requirements
- 4-5 years of e-commerce or digital experience
- Experience in scrum/agile development methodology
- Retail experience preferred
- Familiarity with web analytics tools (preferably Adobe Analytics) and experience using data to make decisions
The following is an example of the number of jobs for this specialty and average salaries in product management:
| Top skills Mentioned by at least 10 major companies with this job title posting |
Courses See the syllabus for each course for relevant skills, as not all skills are taught in every course. |
|---|---|
| Bring new products to market. Identify new opportunities. Forecasting. |
MKT 6329 Product Management & New Product Development MKT/ENTP 6375 Technology and New Product Development ENTP 6390 Business Model Innovation |
| Strong project management skills, able to use Agile and SCRUM (mainly in technology and software companies) |
MIS 6360 Agile Project Management OPRE 6362 Project Management in Engineering and Operations |
| Manage pricing, profitability and margins | MKT 6336 Pricing Analytics |
| Managing the brand and positioning | MKT 6330 Brand Management |
Product Management Associations and Meetups
PDMA (Product Development and Management Association)
Certifications
The Association of International Product Marketing and Management
Blogs
SVPG-Silicon Valley Product Group
The Accidental Product Manager
Recommended Books
