The N-House Community had the privilege of hosting Eileen Chan and Theodore William for our weekly Entrepreneurship event, Wicked Wednesdays. Eileen Chan is the co-founder and Head of Talent at Content.co, while Theodore William is a product manager for products and platforms at NCS, a member of Singtel.
During their panel discussion, Eileen and Theodore shared with the audience about their experiences and understanding of the scene thus far. Many of our audiences had the opportunity to ask some insightful questions as well. We have summarized the session below for anyone who was not able to attend the discussion or is simply interested in product management.
Product Manager vs Project Manager — What is the Difference?
A product manager is more business-oriented and client-facing. The interface with customers to understand problems and needs, before deciding on the overall product direction. Product managers are strategic — they set the priorities and make the call on product development. They ask the Whats and Whys — Is this what we need? Why are we implementing this feature? Does this fulfill our business objectives?
On the other hand, a project manager is more concerned with the tactical aspect of each project, such as ensuring that the development team is on task with the project timeline to hit milestones and deadlines. They deal with the execution and implementation of a development plan, focusing on the How? and the When?.
Ultimately, product managers and project managers work hand-in-hand to get a product developed and brought to market on time and on budget while meeting the goals and needs of all stakeholders.
What Does It Take to Be a Product Manager?
Product managers play an important role in guiding a product to success. Not only are they required to have deep product expertise and understanding of market conditions, but product managers are also expected to communicate well with both clients and the development team. Here are 3 key points we have gathered from Eileen and Theodore on what it takes to be a product manager.
- Be able to understand and speak the language of both customer and developer
Having to deal with both clients and developers, it is important for Product Manager managers to switch up their approach depending on who they are speaking with. Clients are concerned with business objectives. This is why it is important for Product Managers to display an understanding of clients’ needs and instill confidence about how the product solution can solve their business problems. On the other hand, developers are more concerned about the actual implementation of the product. Understanding and using technical terminologies will, therefore, be more helpful in getting ideas across to them.
2. Empathy
Empathy is key to better communication and resolving conflict. Empathy is particularly important in persuading and motivating developers throughout product development. Certain features may seem impossible and unfeasible, yet required by the client. This is when Product Managers have to persuade the development team to take on the challenge. Empathy is the ultimate persuasion tool; to persuade others, we first have to know where they are coming from. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for developers to lose motivation along the way. This is when the product manager comes in as a cheerleader to push and guide development to success!
3. Understanding the market well
It is important for Product Managers to understand the market well so as to deliver the best and most suitable solutions unique to each business need.
Deciding on Development Methodologies
There are two main development methodologies — Waterfall and Agile. Here are Eileen and Theodore’s insights on how they select their development methodologies.
Waterfall
The Waterfall development methodology is often used for projects with specific requirements, where the set of functionalities to be built are already known and decided upon. It is useful for achieving fast results with the lowest amount of resources possible.
Agile
Agile development gives the project flexibility in aligning stakeholders together. It also allows the prioritizing of features as the situation or market changes.
Industry practices
Ultimately, development methodologies are decided on a per case basis. The decision depends on the project, use cases, the team and resources on hand. Different methodologies are applied at different times, depending on the context.
Prioritizing as a Project Manager
Lastly, Eileen and Theodore shared some tips on how aspiring Product Managers can choose to prioritize on future projects.
- Consider the severity of the problem
If the problem is big enough, it will be obvious to everyone. Speaking to stakeholders can give you more intuition on what needs to be done and which are the urgent problems that need to be solved first. It is a fast and effective way to identify problems. A data-driven approach can also be considered, although more time and resource-intensive as compared to the former. Data-driven approaches would be good for optimization purposes.
- Consider the end goal
A service-level agreement can be used to align the team around shared goals for the product. This can help with decision-making, as every decision made should be a step towards achieving the end goals.
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Many thanks to Eileen and Theodore once again for coming down. We hope that this session has helped to clarify your understanding of what it means to be a product manager, and we’ll see you at our next Wicked Wednesday event!
