Learn the fundamentals of Product Management that make up the entire Product Management process,

 Product management is the process of making the right product that solves the right problem for the right person at the right time. The right person is the customer, who along with business and technology, make up the heart of the product management process. It is the process by which a vision or idea becomes a valuable product.

The project manager is an extremely important person in an organization. You will typically find product managers at companies that build software or products for customer or business-to-business use.

The product manager has the responsibility of analyzing the markets and watching the competition, and laying out the initial product vision based on his assessments. The project manager has duties that are both strategic and tactical, and must have excellent leadership skills. He must be able to bridge the gaps between the many different teams working on a product, from design and engineering to sales and marketing.

The project manager sees the product through from conception to final completion. This is called the product lifecycle. 

 There are many different styles of product management, and in this course, we will be focusing on the agile methodology and in particular, Scrum, a variant of agile that is specifically used in software development.

Companies have to introduce new products every now and then to stay competitive. The development of new products and managing the lifecycle of the products demand dedicated resources that can incubate new products and manage the product lifecycle. The important thing to understand is that the complexity of the product being launched and the size of the organization determine whether there would be separate teams or one team.

The responsibilities of the product manager span the entire gamut of product development and product marketing ranging from analyzing market conditions to defining features or functions of a product and including launching the product in the marketplace and following through the entire lifecycle.

The product management function is cross functional in nature and bridges many departments. For instance, the product manager has to liaise with the engineering department and the research and design department and at the same time coordinate with the sales and marketing function. 

Product management has become a key function in the organizational structure and occupies a place of prominence in the organizational hierarchy. The reasons for this are not hard to find since the business landscape in the present times needs astute and agile product management. Indeed, the success or otherwise of the products being launched can make or mar the prospects of the company as a whole. It is for this reason that product managers need to be especially shrewd and smart.