I’ve been looking all over to find a program manager competency assessment. I found several previous attempts, such as that at Ravi Mehta’s website, James Whitmaan, or the one at Gartner. To my taste, none of them really worked. I wanted something that was simple, quick, and also could provide me with a visualization of what I was doing. So, I decided to develop my own version. This is still a work in progress, and I might adjust it as we go along. However, after speaking to several veteran product managers at companies such as Autodesk, Unity, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, I came to the conclusion that the skills of a product manager are in the following five broad categories of a) Business, b) Design, c) Market, d) Technology, and e) Legal.
After days of deliberation, I came up with a 10 point matrix. This matrix can be made in this sentence:
Technology Product Development is setting Vision via Market Research and Data and the Leadership of the Business and Stakeholders.
I know this is silly but bear with me. The sentence above has ten keywords in it. These ten keywords are the building blocks of my assessment matrix:
- Technology
- Product
- Development
- Vision
- Market
- Research
- Data
- Leadership
- Business
- Stakeholders.
The following questionnaire covers these categories in a 10 X 5 fashion. For each category, there are five questions to answer. You can use the link below to copy this to your own Google Drive and mark yourself.
Here is the questionnaire for your reference:
TECHNOLOGY
- You have a thorough understanding of your product’s architectural components.
- You understand at a high level how software is engineered.
- You provide valuable insights to the overall technical decisions and strategy.
- You compare technology solutions to provide helpful suggestions for technological problems.
- Adv -> You can use your engineering skills to support the development or decision-making directly.
PRODUCT
- You understand the difference between a product and its features.
- You can take an existing technological idea and adapt it to fit your product.
- You utilize your own experience of using the product to evaluate the value of features.
- You can individually assess the user experience design of your software application.
- Adv -> You can convert complex customer problems into features.
DEVELOPMENT
- You have a thorough understanding of agile principles and methodologies.
- You practically understand the relationships between theme, epic, user story, task, and subtask.
- You can assign, maintain and groom a backlog for your team.
- Your backlog tells a clear story of the immediate future.
- Adv -> You can differentiate between the different types of agile.
VISION
- You have a clear vision of where you want the product to be.
- You continually translate your ideas into a clear and actionable product roadmap.
- The roadmap you devise is clear for your team, and they can follow it independently.
- Your product roadmap represents the challenges and opportunities of the business.
- Adv -> By looking at your roadmap, someone else can infer where your product is going.
MARKET
- You are familiar with your users in a broader sense, such as their personas, mindsets, and archetypes.
- You can differentiate between users’ immediate needs and future wants.
- You regularly meet your customers and learn about their processes and challenges.
- You can separate various customer segments and differentiate between their needs.
- Adv -> You work or live in circles where your product users are in constant touch with you.
RESEARCH
- You frequently use scientific research methods to learn about various phenomena.
- You use rigorous research to understand your customers, their feedback, and their behavior.
- You code the research data to detect patterns and convert them to actionable insights.
- You continually conduct various product usability protocols on your own.
- Adv -> You can devise new research techniques and validate them.
DATA
- You are familiar with quantitative data analysis and visualization.
- You utilize quantifiable data to make and support your decisions.
- You continually assign new success metrics for your product.
- You regularly measure and analyze OKRs and KPIs.
- Adv -> You can conduct statistical data analysis on your own.
LEADERSHIP
- You can clearly differentiate between management and leadership.
- You motivate your team during difficult times and earn their trust.
- Your team believes that the project progress is reasonably and clearly communicated with them.
- Your team believes that they work in a collaborative and trustworthy environment.
- Adv -> You assign the product’s success collectively to the team while personally taking the fall for its failure.
BUSINESS
- You understand the overall business strategy and how your product fits in it.
- You have been shaping the strategy of your product to align with the broader business goals.
- You have witnessed the profit or loss that your product has caused to the business’s revenue and reputation.
- You consider the legal aspects of running a product, such as privacy policy.
- Adv -> You have strategized products that innovated and disrupted your industry.
STAKEHOLDERS
- When making decisions and planning, you consider all your stakeholders, big or small.
- You articulate to various stakeholders what is or is not possible and why.
- You make sure stakeholders understand and appreciate development or product priorities.
- Your stakeholders feel confident and are excited about the future you have drawn.
- Adv -> You understand and constantly correlate the requirements and concerns of various stakeholders.
Feel free to share your radar chart using #productmanagement