Communication is an essential skill for a Product Manager. We need to be able to simplify the business language once we are communicating with developers, we need to transform the technical important aspect of a product into a business language and we also need to clearly report all aspects of the product for the high management level. Those are some examples of how versatile the communication of a PM must be to achieve and to keep synchronized with all people involved in product success. Yeah, I think we can say we are polyglot! 🙂
I know that not all PMs come from a technical background and I think it is ok. But from my point of view, as I do, I would say that being able to talk at a more technical level with the developers helps a lot. And it works in both ways. It helps me to understand points on the technical side, and in many discussions with stakeholders, I can already anticipate that a technical perspective can be on the way and try to check other sides of their problem to help the developers to have options for the solution. Also, I already had feedbacks from developers pointing out how my technical knowledge made conversations easier. And just to be clear, I have only a trivial understanding of normal software development (SaaS e.g.) since I was working in BI before and it’s another world.
Again related to my BI experience, since I was a developer I have been working close to stakeholders. And for me, it is quite easy to make project reports and to understand business requirements. I had many situations in which a user or stakeholder was not open to dialogs nor help the “IT team” because of previous experiences, and after a while, we managed to have a good work partnership. Other importance of communication with C levels and stakeholders is to make sure your team has the sponsorship needed and access to evidence of problems to have good software solutions.
We can’t forget about marketing. This is a very special language on our list. There are so many particular aspects we deal with regarding it. Since market research, user experiences, design. It is really hard to make a cool looking design that can at the same time improve the user experience. Luckily nowadays we have many types of tests (and test tools) we can apply and we work closely with marketing to understand the market we want to achieve and the gaps we can fill in.
And there is the hardest one in my opinion: “people’s languages”! If I check the books I read in the past few years, most of them are about people’s relationships and how to improve these skills. Each one of us has a personality, different believes and cultures, a variety of backgrounds, and our life situation we are at a specific moment. We need to consider all of that once communication with developers, stakeholders, users…. For all roles, the human aspect of communication needs to be taking into account. Make sure you understand the person you are talking to. It will make communication more effective for sure.
Although I didn’t consider all the aspects of PM’s communication, I consider those the main ones, and the ones we should look for improvements always to make sure we can help to build good products.