What Does A Digital Product Manager Do?

WHAT DOES A DIGITAL PRODUCT MANAGER DO?

Published: Dec 3, 2024 – The Digital Product Manager defines and manages the vision for internal tools to enhance customer and user experiences while driving growth through innovative solutions. This position translates business and user needs into actionable product specifications, collaborates with cross-functional teams for timely delivery, and monitors digital product performance using clear metrics. The manager also prioritizes the product backlog and resolves issues to ensure alignment with strategic, financial, and technical goals.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Digital Product Manager

1. Digital Product Manager Responsibilities

Solution Strategy: Drive solution strategy, project execution, commercial strategy, and solution adoption.
Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner with and lead cross-functional teams including internal Food and Beverage stakeholders, the enterprise Commercial Digital Solutions team, and external vendors and technology partners.
Customer and Business Insights: Direct voice of customer and voice of business to uncover key business drivers for innovation concepts.
User-Centric Design: Understand user’s needs to create a product experience that solves problems and engages users.
Product Decision-Making: Facilitate the product decisions and prioritization of features, including when and which features are released after gaining input from key stakeholders.
Product Delivery Collaboration: Collaborate with the technology delivery teams to deliver the prioritized product features.
Sales and Engagement: Partner with corporate accounts and field sales and service teams to effectively merchandise solutions with customers and drive engagement and adoption.
Financial Management: Manage the short and long-term financial decisions related to product and software development.
Project Management: Fill the role of a project manager for targeted initiatives.
Solution Testing and Verification: Test, verify, and document results for business acceptance of complex solutions.
Meeting Facilitation: Lead/facilitate meetings with business and technical resources.
Presentation Preparation: Prepare presentations containing both business and technical topics.

2. Digital Product Manager Job Summary

Product Knowledge: Understand the product line in and out by tracking app metrics, financial statements, user research, competitive analysis, support inquiries, and everything in between.
Product Vision: Distil multiple sources of signal into a succinct product vision through multiple artifacts, such as roadmaps, proposals, design briefs, engineering requirements, and test cases.
Project Management: Manage multiple cross-functional projects, in various stages, without missing a beat.
Quality Assurance: Test product features to ensure quality, functionality, and usability.
Cross-functional collaboration: Bridge the gap between design, engineering, marketing, sales, and support.
Effective Communication: Communicate effectively, and make sure everyone from engineers to customers clearly understands every facet of the product.
Product Monitoring: Actively monitor in-progress and live products to identify potential problems and proactive solutions.
Process Definition: Help define the process that gets products built efficiently, on spec, and on time.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Use hard data to make a case for product features that are impossible to refute or ignore.
Decision Making: Make the hard decisions, and balance quick wins vs. platform investments.
Copywriting: Write concise copy that gets the job done.
Efficient Problem Solving: Figure out how to get 80% of the value out of any feature or project with 20% of the effort.

3. Digital Product Manager Accountabilities

Roadmap Management: Assist in managing Line of Business roadmaps.
Strategic Partnership: Work closely with strategic partners to understand their objectives.
Feature Scope Definition: Define the scope for new features and ongoing feature enhancements, including management of a prioritized backlog.
Product Lifecycle Management: Own the end-to-end product lifecycle from conception to launch, ensuring team delivery commitments are successfully met at each stage along the way.
Cross-functional collaboration: Work with designers, technology teams, and stakeholders across risk, operations, contact center, and the branch to ensure products are built to spec.
Requirements Writing: Write product requirements and lead user story development sessions in a cross-functional setting.
User Acceptance Testing: Perform user acceptance testing on products and work with technology teams to troubleshoot and resolve identified issues.
Product Launch Support: Support product launch and rollout activities (marketing, internal communications, operational readiness).
Competitive Analysis: Perform research and analysis on competitive and industry issues to recommend product enhancements and/or validate stakeholder needs.
Feedback Analysis: Gather and analyze feedback in support of continuous improvement of member experience.
Stakeholder Communication: Ensure effective internal and external communication with all stakeholders regarding the product development process.
Project Support: Manage and support special projects that arise.

4. Digital Product Manager Functions

Customer Journey Development: Develop and evolve the customer journey in collaboration with other Product Managers and the UX Lead by acting as the voice of the consumer in the advancement of Web and mobile applications.
Digital Experience Analysis: Understand how customers use digital and how changes to channel experiences can have positive or negative impacts on customer buying/lead behavior.
Market and Competitor Analysis: Analyze customer needs, and competitive offerings and provide direction on best practices and emerging trends.
Roadmap Prioritization: Develop feature lists, user stories, and business requirements, and prioritize the roadmap based on impact and evidence-based decision-making.
Business Case Creation: Create and own the business case for Web and mobile applications and drive for approval with brand leadership and other technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Cross-functional collaboration: Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to scope, design, concept test, and deliver product/feature enhancements and/or new features.
Requirements and Criteria Definition: Provide clear requirements and business rules to guide the development of new features and define acceptance criteria for those features.
Market Awareness: Continuously be aware of market, competitor, device, and industry developments and trends.
Design Simplification: Simplify complex design requirements into parts and systematically evaluate them.
Project Implementation Management: Collaborate with IT, Project Management, and external agencies to ensure projects are implemented per specifications, within budget, and on schedule.
Business Results Reporting: Partner with internal reporting teams to define, measure, and report on business results.
KPI Monitoring and Reporting: Monitor and report on KPIs, generating easily digestible executive reports with actionable recommendations to optimize the websites.
Feedback and Direction: Provide clear direction as well as timely and prescriptive feedback on work.
Application Management: Manage the day-to-day operation and support for Web and mobile applications.
Compliance Management: Responsible for maintaining compliance with federal and state legislation including ADA and CCPA.

5. Digital Product Manager Job Description

Roadmap Creation: Create short/medium/long-term roadmaps for products.
Customer and Stakeholder Needs Definition: Create a product that defines member and Stakeholder needs.
Test Scenario Oversight: Define, create, and oversee test scenarios for the QA team to process.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate cross-functionally with internal and 3rd party vendors to create timetables, and roadmaps, and oversee launches of products.
Product Roadmap Development: Develop the digital product roadmap, for assigned areas of responsibility, based on a user-centric view of the researcher market and an understanding of unmet information needs.
Product Idea Championing: Consolidate, prioritize, and champion new product ideas that drive new revenue in support of the vertical strategy.
Business Model Articulation: Work with other members of the APL leadership team to articulate business models for new products and services.
Scrum Team Management: Manage scrum teams to execute roadmap deliverables according to agreed-upon requirements on time and within budget.
Convergence Roadmap Collaboration: Collaborate with leadership and peers on the digital education team to ensure delivery of the overall convergence roadmap.
Influence and Motivation: Influence and motivate people, both within and outside the business unit, to take action toward achieving business group/organization goals.
Client Needs Forecasting: Forecast client needs and wants through research of market trends, customer feedback, current state analysis, and user testing.
Customer Needs Liaison: Act as the liaison between the customer and the technical teams, communicating customer needs and translating those into new product features for the team to design.
Stakeholder Communication: Communicate the team's decision-making process with key stakeholders.
Solution Alignment: Ensure that developed solutions achieve the vision and align with the project roadmap.
Relationship Building: Build relationships and communicate at a high level with a wide array of partners, including business stakeholders, technology, senior leadership, and other Product Strategy team members.
Technology Collaboration: Collaborate with technology partners to define the scope of work, participate in planning activities, and partner in decision-making.

6. Digital Product Manager Overview

Product Roadmap Development: Assist in developing a product roadmap for Shake Shack’s Digital Product suite and next-gen store touchpoints.
Feature and Function Determination: Contribute to the determination of product features and functions and partner with cross-functional teams in product development.
Maintenance and Prioritization: Lead maintenance, prioritization, and UAT efforts for product enhancements and defect remediation.
Product Documentation: Prepare product documents and support sales and marketing with the necessary product knowledge and technical expertise.
Market Research: Research and analyze market conditions and identify key consumer trends and opportunities.
Market Feedback Utilization: Use market feedback to evaluate product functionality and drive present/future product direction.
Partner Relationship Management: Manage partner relationships with external design and build agencies.
Liaison Management: Serve as the key liaison between the business, user experience design, and technology.
Vision and Strategy Distillation: Distill the long-term vision and strategy for flagship investment products and build the roadmap to get us there.
Product Discovery Oversight: Oversee product and feature discovery to find new ways to lift KPIs related to increasing awareness, engagement, consideration, and lead generation.
Feature and Experience Definition: Create and define the features and customer experience through high-quality business requirements, and user stories while managing the scope of each release.
Product Marketing Strategy: Develop product marketing strategies, and user journeys, and craft compelling messages across marketing distribution channels.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Use qualitative and quantitative data analysis to balance constraints and customer needs to ensure execution of the full product lifecycle process from concept to launch.
Decision-Making Facilitation: Help the product team move forward swiftly through rigor, discipline, and transparency in decision-making and removing roadblocks.

7. Digital Product Manager Details and Accountabilities

Product Vision Ownership: Own the web product vision and maintain a prioritized feature backlog based on business value, aligned with the marketing and business strategy and resource capacity (budget and teams).
Scope and Requirements Definition: Work with stakeholder teams to determine the scope of different projects affecting the website and define the objectives and requirements.
User Story Creation: Translate the project requirements into actionable user stories and tasks.
Project Execution: Drive the high-quality execution of the project roadmap with the teams on time.
Project Scheduling: Develop and manage a detailed project schedule and work plan.
Stakeholder Communication: Communicate effectively with stakeholders and provide project updates consistently about project implementation strategy, progress, adjustments, and results.
User Needs Analysis: Deeply understand and analyze internal and external user needs through data analysis, user studies, and market research.
Product Vision and Strategy: Help define product vision and strategy, and build consensus throughout business leadership, and multiple teams such as customer experience, project management, engineering, deployment, operations, and support.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with cross-functional teams to help build product roadmaps, and create business and functional requirements.
Product Lifecycle Management: Contribute to the overall success and lifecycle of the product by serving as Product Manager during definition, design, user story/requirement creation, documentation, launch, go-to-market activities, management updates, and KPIs.
Agile Product Ownership: Serve as Agile Product Owner, and represent both the business and the targeted end users during day-to-day product development efforts with technology and project management teams using Agile methodologies.
Success Metric Achievement: Drive products to achieve success metrics on an ongoing basis throughout the product lifecycle by analyzing and solving the problems of targeted end users.
User Persona and Market Analysis: Develop a thorough understanding of user personas, continually assessing the competitive landscape, and emerging Pharmaceutical industry trends.

8. Digital Product Manager Essential Functions

Business Needs Representation: Understand and represent the business needs and those of clients, serving as a local proxy for the Digital Product team, and bridging gaps between colleagues in different regions and time zones.
Roadmap and Backlog Management: Assist the primary Product Owner in defining and managing the product roadmap and backlog.
Requirement Facilitation: Facilitate requirement discussions for new features and enhancements, partnering closely with local development teams (intra and inter-squad), writing and editing user stories where needed.
Defect Triage and Resolution: Triage incoming defects to understand business impacts and partner with Technology partners on resolution.
Release Process Participation: Participate in release processes including regression testing and ongoing business UAT support.
Product Lifecycle Management: Manages aspects of the product lifecycle enabling the product to meet the needs of customers/users and achieve financial or other targets.
Lower-Value Product Ownership: Acts as product owner for one or more lower-value products or services, prioritizes product requirements, and owns a product backlog.
Market and User Analysis: Analyses market and/or user research, feedback, expert opinion, and usage data to understand needs and opportunities.
Product Uptake Facilitation: Facilitates uptake of products by planning the development of product collateral, supporting and evaluating campaigns, and monitoring product performance.
Product Launch Management: Rolls out product trials and product launches.
Performance Monitoring and Improvement: Responsible for the performance of their respective business functions through measuring/monitoring current performance and improving future performance by researching competitive trends, industry trends, and technological innovations.
Checkout and Digital Operations Ownership: Takes responsibility for the checkout process, digital customer profile, security/fraud/privacy/legal functions, digital retail store sections, or digital marketing/merchandising capabilities.
Performance Improvement: Drives performance improvements by developing project roadmaps, effective management of issues, project execution, and evaluating impacts on customers and business metrics.
Operational Decision Making: Makes critical day-to-day operational decisions that have a significant impact on conversion rates, customer satisfaction, and results from business operations.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Ensures operational success by developing key relationships with inter-department and cross-functional teams, producing effective communications and collaboration across the enterprise.

9. Digital Product Manager Role Purpose

Digital Product Lifecycle Management: Work with stakeholders to manage all aspects of the digital product lifecycle including discovery, build, and ongoing improvements to meet business objectives and customer needs.
Commercial Insight and Optimization: Develop a deep understanding of commercial priorities and targets and ensure the company is optimizing digital products using insights to include analytics, feedback, and user research.
Digital Plan Alignment: Ensure alignment with the Digital plan and manage delivery teams to provide a pipeline of enhancements and initiatives.
Requirements Definition and Prioritization: Define and manage scoping, requirements definition, and prioritization activities with inputs from key stakeholders.
Backlog Ownership and Roadmap Communication: Prioritise product requirements, own a single, consolidated backlog, and communicate the digital product roadmap to key stakeholders within the business.
Stakeholder Briefing: Create and run an effective mechanism that ensures all key stakeholders are fully briefed on all aspects of digital product activity.
Business Opportunity Identification: Work with the relevant stakeholders to identify and drive new business opportunities across new and existing channels.
Project Reporting: Provide regular reporting to the Project Manager on progress, issues, and risks associated with digital product delivery.
Supplier Management: Work closely with and manage 3rd party suppliers.
Competitive Landscape Analysis: In partnership with Innovation, develop a solid understanding of the competitive landscape, new entrants, and possible partners.
Data-Driven Product Roadmap: Use data to help refine payments vision and develop a product roadmap to help make CCB the leading digital banking solution for commercial clients in the US.
Backlog and Change Management: Drive and manage a backlog of user stories in partnership with SMEs on the team, and partner with Technology on delivering change to clients iteratively.
Client Experience Integration: Partner with Client Experience to incorporate client discovery throughout the product development lifecycle, and lead UI/UX development, including ongoing customer testing.
Cross-Functional Buy-In: Work with cross-functional partners to solicit buy-in as well as approvals.
Fintech Partner Selection: Lead the selection of Fintech partners, negotiate agreements, and manage initial third-party approval processes in partnership with Channels and Product managers.

10. Digital Product Manager Roles and Details

Product Vision Management: Manage the product vision for internal tools to improve the experience the company provides to customers and the overall user experience.
User Experience Improvement: Develop a deep understanding of the user experience, identify and fill product gaps, and generate new ideas that improve customer experience and drive growth.
User Story and Specification Creation: Translate business needs, user needs, and technological capabilities into user stories and product specifications that are the basis for the development and launch of product features and enhancements.
Business Case and Analytics: Assist with business cases and analytical insights for new product initiatives by identifying clear problems and success metrics, quantitatively analyzing related metrics, and using data to make informed product decisions.
Engineering Collaboration: Work closely with engineering teams to deliver quick time-to-market and optimal resources.
Design and User Research Partnership: Partner with Product Design for discovery and user research, and to design best-in-class user experiences.
Product Communication: Communicate product status, key issues, and launch plans to key partners across the organization.
Expectation Management: Set and continuously manage the right expectations with all relevant stakeholders, including the senior leadership team.
Product Performance Tracking: Track digital product performance including identification of key performance indicators and project benchmarks.
Issue Resolution: Proactively identify and resolve product issues that impair the company's ability to meet its strategic, financial, and technical goals.
Backlog and Project Prioritization: Prioritize product backlog and projects based on business and customer impact.

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