Types of knowledge that product managers need

In addition to enthusiasm and energy, PMs need to build different types of knowledge in order to successfully ship good products:

• Organizational/business
  • How the business operates, who works on what, who knows what, who the stakeholders are and their constraints
• Product & data
  • How it works, how it's used
• Customer
  • Deep understanding of their problems ("What's keeping the C-suites up at night?")
• Industry
  • What customer problems are unsolved on industry level and why they matter, what are the buying decisions, who the competitors are

Reeves argues that in enterprise, Industry knowledge is the most important. Cagan argues it's the customer knowledge in general (not specificly in enterprise). Both are probably right: PMs need to understand their customers and their problems deeply. In enterprise, it's just more important to have this understanding on a higher level (industry).

Organizational knowledge is crucial for day-to-day functioning but also hard to build: it takes the most time.

Tags: product management

ID: 2021-0426-0826

References:

• Cagan – Inspired, p.41
• Reeves, Gaines – Building Products for the Enterprise, ch. 3