How does a business background help you succeed in product management?

PM role often entails navigating the stakeholders of Business, Technical, and People's management. Some solutions may enhance business but be effort-intensive or technologically complex. Conversely, simpler solutions may lack user value. Similar challenges can arise in people's management. To keep stakeholders satisfied, a strong business sense is vital. It helps determine acceptable compromise levels and shapes a vision inclusive of the roadmap, pricing strategy, and other key components. Beyond a business background, experience is a valuable alternative. More experience refines product sense, aiding in decisions that balance stakeholder needs effectively.

A business background is crucial to truly understand the customer, contextualize their interests and be able to accurately measure the value they can potentially receive. Part of your challenge as a product manager is to effectively identify market opportunity and assess the value and meaning of solutions to your customers. Passionate customers may over emphasize the general value of a solution or product characteristics due to excitement over solving their specific need. Few customers will be willing to express the true ROI, value or benefit for fear of weakening negotiating leverage. Also, not all customers may be able to calculate their own ROI for a variety of reasons, this is where your business knowledge and background matter.

From my many experiences as CEO in companies, director, manager of applied strategy at a university and much more - the previous experience of the product manager is very important. The combination of multidisciplinary identity and maturity that allow a wide view of various business considerations (ex. understanding who are the relevant decision makers, different factors of users and more), alongside high emotional intelligence and excellent soft skills, which enable the correct identification of needs and opportunities alongside the matching of the product to the products and capabilities.

Effective product management requires understanding market dynamics and customer needs. A business background provides crucial skills for market research, customer analysis, and value proposition development, ensuring a customer-centric approach that addresses real pain points. Strategic thinking is essential for identifying market opportunities and staying competitive. Data-driven decision-making guides prioritization and aligns products with market demands, while crafting compelling value propositions enables effective communication. Continuous adaptation to market trends ensures product relevance. The synergy of market insights and a business background equips product managers for innovation and long-term success.

There's a common belief, echoed by the current market trend, that PMs need strong technical skills. This has resulted in an influx of PMs with engineering backgrounds and less level of business acumen. PMs with engineering focus usually overemphasize the "how" and drop the primary focus which should be the "what" and "why." In such cases, you may end up with a fantastic technical product which no-body would want in the end! A PM with business background offers a fresh perspective on how the problem a PM tackles can impact the company's success in meeting KPIs.

Product management does not operate in isolation, but serves to deliver on the wider organisation's strategy. Strategy determines the organisation's focus and shapes its priorities. This informs the focus and priorities of product management amidst many tradeoff decisions that must be made. R&D capacity is not limited and the choices which product management makes are important in ensuring R&D efficiency and the execution of strategy in terms of financial outcomes, product leadership, long term roadmap competitiveness, performance, customer experience and sustainability. As such, a business background helps in creating and maintaining line of sight between product management activities/ decisions/priorities and the organisation's goals.

In my experience, it mostly helps in understanding the business viability aspect of the product that you are responsible for. Especially when working in an empowered product organisation taking ownership for the financial viability of your product is crucial and a basic business / finance knowledge can be very helpful to live up to this task.

I agree having a business background helps, but it's not a 100% hard requirement! You can still be an excellent PM no matter what background you're coming from, as long as you remember that every product ultimately must serve the business and its investors. The other thing I'll call out here is that it's dangerous to rely solely on a business perspective. We need to establish a deep understanding of customer needs, and that's where the "soft sciences" come in e.g. psychology, history, communications. If you treat your product solely as a business with numbers to be optimized, you'll lose sight of the fact that your product must first create tangible, emotional value for your customers before you can capture any value for your investors!

Well, we all have experienced projects related to development of internal or customer dedicated solutions that have consumed so much of our internal resources for finally being thrown away. There can be many reasons to that: too long time-to-market because of insufficient project sponsoring or poor effort estimation, failing market vision that could lead to early obsolescence. In this accelerating world, business strategy has more than ever to be sharp, consistent, sustained in time across the management. Product delivery in that context has to be agile and versatile to cope with change.

A business background is highly valuable when it comes to market understanding. Product managers with a business degree can provide knowledge into market dynamics and customer behavior which allows them to take informed decisions about pricing, product positioning, competitive dynamics and go-to-market strategies. Also, it helps in terms of product planning and development wherein product managers with the required skillset can leverage their knowledge to define product features that are aligned with customer needs and business goals.

To clarify, a business background can help you with learning how to communicate effectively, but it's not the only viable path! You'd be surprised at how effective Customer Support specialists are at product management - they're quite good at empathizing with customers, especially because they tend to work with customers at the moment where the customer is facing significant pain. Another surprising path to product management is legal/compliance - this function is used to working in high-stakes situations where they have to understand and communicate nuanced details to a variety of stakeholders. The important thing is to gain the underlying skill, not to force yourself into a particular major or field of study!

A product manager speaks different languages (design, technical, data, marketing, etc.) in various interactions. Having a business background helps in articulating the right words to effectively communicate with the audience. This versatility not only strengthens communication but also plays a pivotal role in building successful collaborations and driving product success.

In addition to understand various aspects of a business to understand how to successfully complete the tasks related to product management, a product manager must communicate their work clearly to all stakeholders. To communicate the pertinent information required by each stakeholder in a way that resonates with them and provides value, understanding their functions and department organizations is critical. Furthermore, a comprehensive feedback loop, incorporating information obtained from these cross-functional interactions, is key for refining the product management process, making better decisions, and incrementally improving in one’s role.

One of the reasons why I transitioned into product management is my business background. Managing stakeholders and communicating effectively with them has been one of my strong skills before I transitioned into product management. And sincerely, this skill has helped me to be able to communicate effectively with stakeholders of various product project I have done over time. I have heard a lot of PMs complain about some of their team members delaying a project and one thing I have discovered about them is that most don't have a business background. They can't really communicate effectively the vision of the product, the roadmaps and business side of the product to the stakeholders for the successful completion of the project

The product role is quite multi faceted. Stakeholder engagement and communication are key to relaying the vision and overseeing successful execution of the product roadmap. One thing i have found helpful is identyfing your stakeholders and ensuring they are onboarded from the very start of development. As we develop personalised products and solutions, it is important to create an environment where co-creation can exist and this achievable through clear stakeholder management and communication.

Based on experience, it is crucial to have a strong business background and at the same time understand the roadmap and risks to avoid miscommunication, misunderstanding and make the whole journey smooth.

Having a Business background helps you assess a particular scenario and take a call by prioritizing the product backlog based on not just the technical effort and time involved but also based on the business timelines agreed upon with stakeholders and the impact it can create if or if not a particular aspect is not addressed on time, basically a cost-benefit analysis.

A business background helps you have a good understanding of the market, personas and their needs. Also, with business background and experience in a specific market, you will have a good view of the cost and risks of doing new things. The combination of these things will make you have a more correct prioritization of doing things and your product roadmap will be more accurate than someone who does not have a business perspective. Also, an experienced person with a good business background knows that doing a certain task will probably have a greater impact on which product metric and will usually have better targeting.

When it comes to product development and delivery, a business background helps to see things from the customers perspective. Business understanding helps create solutions with customer experience at the forefront. This then influences your customer journeys and user stories.

A business background equips product managers to effectively oversee the product development and delivery process in the B2B space. This includes planning and executing the product roadmap, coordinating the product team, and mitigating challenges. Additionally, it involves ensuring that the product meets customer and business expectations, emphasizing quality, and managing resources and risks effectively. By leveraging their expertise in project management, resource allocation, risk management, quality assurance, and customer relationship management, product managers can drive the successful development and delivery of products in the B2B market.

I'm actually not entirely sure I agree with this... As a business major in undergrad, I didn't learn how to run a retro or how to reflect on a failed project. A business degree will teach you to analyze external case studies about the successes and failures of other companies, but I'm not confident that it formally teaches you how to run effective reflection & learning exercises with your teammates. The good news is that you can learn all of this on your own! By spending the last 30 minutes of your day reflecting on "what went well," "what could have gone better", and "what will I do differently next time", you'll quickly gain this capability and be able to bring it with you into your product management career!

I think there needs to be more nuance to what is meant with learning. Business background makes it easier to see certain patterns and learn about certain perspectives easier /faster. This has effect especially where organisations are under pressure /understuffed as the threshold is much lower to see certain important patterns. As it is written now it can be wrongly interpreted to - ”i learn everyday, i learn through retros, i learn through reading wikipedia”. Lack of business background will never remove learning part from PM role, it influence WHAT PM is perceptive to and is comfortable to do with less effort (or to do at all/ scale down /skip doing especially under pressure)

In my opinion, a business background for sure teaches one thing which is effective time management. This is an important skill not just for product management but for learning and growth in any aspect of life or as a professional. But learning and growth is not a function of having a business background. Learning from one’s own success and failure is a quality that has to be developed and honed. It is irrespective of whether an individual has had a certain education. I strongly believe that once you are in an atmosphere, say an organisation where you find appropriate learning opportunity, a challenging peer group and a healthy surrounding that promotes growth, it becomes easier to learn and grow.

It enhances success in product management by providing a solid grasp of market dynamics, customer behavior, and financial principles. This foundation enables individuals to align product strategies with organizational goals, make informed decisions, and foster collaboration with cross-functional teams. The analytical and strategic skills gained from a business background are crucial for navigating the complexities of product development and driving sustainable business growth.

A business background empowers product managers to embark on a journey of continuous learning and professional growth. By embracing new skills, adapting to change, seeking feedback, and seeking mentorship, product managers can cultivate a growth mindset that drives their development and elevates their expertise. This commitment to continuous learning is crucial for staying ahead of the curve, delivering successful products, and achieving long-term career success in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

In most organisations the role of product management is not defined and as a result you are expected to do everything and anything related to developing and launching a product. Some days you will have to become business manager to ensure product has budgetary aspects taken care of, other days you will be acting as conflict resolution manager ensuring amicable product progress across a wider range of stakeholders and yet on other days you will be managing delivery and removing roadblocks in your scrum master capacity. You need to be prepared to do anything and everything to launch a product and make it a success as intended

In my experience, a business education helps one with “big picture thinking” and better understand how different parts of the business engine work together. Also, a MBA might have more experience and pedagogical toolkits for scenario building, risk assessment, commercial viability check etc. Additionally, a business work-experience (family business, entrepreneurship etc) can sometimes give any future product managers, the experience with selling. Sales is the real truth of consumer insights and sifting through what matters to your users and what not.

Having a business background in product will lead to: - A business driven decision-making mindset at first. But it won’t be bad because as a PM, we would be prioritising user experiences. So ultimately having a prior bent towards business and revenue would help in balancing these 2 sides.

Well it depends on the kind of profile as a PM one is into. If the role is outbound PM then I believe MBA does help indeed as it shapes you to speak & present with confidence. Also when as a outbound PM where inclination is more towards business side and target audience is majorly management I believe that's where MBA grad can easily understand the management jargons and make them understand the product benefits in their language.

PM has been an evolutionary role in straddling the need to cover both business and technology. The pendulum of importance between these two shifts based on the needs of the company and its objectives. Creating a strong PM function with balance is imperative to the success of the product from ideation to end of life. In my experience the best of breed PM possess the concrete knowledge of business principles and an ever changing understanding of technology.