Various product management challenges that you face as a product manager can at times feel overwhelming.This is the reason, product manager role is considered one of the toughest jobs. Overcoming these challenges needs some specific skill set for a product manager to succeed. If you are new to product management, it would be beneficial to understand the challenges that you will potentially face in this role. To over come these challenges, it is important to understand the challenge first and then figure out how it can be tackled.

In this post, I will take you through top 6 common product management challenges:

#1:Setting the right product roadmap

One of the top most product management challenges is setting the right product roadmap. Creating the product roadmap with the details of what needs to be done and the release timeline is one of the crucial responsibilities of the product manager. There is a lot of effort that goes into creating the roadmap. First step is to gather all the potential requirements through various channels i.e. customer feedback, stakeholder requests, market research etc. and then prioritizing those features. feature prioritization can be done through various methods like Value vs effort, Kano model, MOSCOW etc based on different situations. Due to competing demands from different stakeholders, this is one of the difficult steps to go through and come up with a finalized prioritized list. It is time consuming process as well. It could be overwhelming for a newbie product manager to go through this huge process and then create a product roadmap. Challenge here is to keep calm and carefully evaluate all the resources, listen to everyone and gather everything while also getting the opinion from every team member and key stakeholder. Sometimes product managers find it really difficult to say no to stakeholders based on their position and this results in prioritizing features that might not be as crucial as others which might get left out in this process.

My suggestion is create a step by step process in your notes, which you need to follow through while going through feature prioritization. If you digress from your path, just refer back to the process you created initially and make sure to go through each and every step. Here are high level steps that would be involved to help you glide through this process but you can add a step or two based on the process requirements in your organization:

1. Gather all the ideas: Go through all the resources from where you can get an idea to generate new features, list down all the potential ideas.
2. Brainstorm: Brainstorm your ideas with the product development team and list down its benefits, high level effort involved
3. Talk to stakeholders:Connect with key stakeholders to know their opinion on each feature
4. Prioritization Method: Narrow down a prioritization approach that you need to follow
5. Analyze features using prioritization method: Using the finalized prioritization approach list down all the potential features
6. Rank the features: Rank the features using the approach as per priority
7. Create the roadmap: Create a product roadmap using a software tool or you can use an excel sheet.

#2: Meeting deadlines

There is a lot of work to be done by product managers, and all the work has its own deadlines. With so many tasks assigned at the same time, it can be challenging to meet the deadlines as well. The key to get everything done within the deadline is to keep your to-do list organized. At the beginning of the day, think about what needs to be done by end of the day. Create a list and prioritize your tasks for the day. It will help you to atleast achieve the important top 3-4 tasks out of a list of 10 that you start your day with.From my own experience, when I see a lot of to do list at the beginning of the day, I get excited and I like the challenge to complete everything that I have on my list by the end of the day. It is extremely fulfilling for me, when I make sure each and every task on the list was completed by end of the day. By keeping a tab on all the tasks for each day, you keep progressing steadily towards meeting your deadlines.

There would always be obstacles to achieve your assigned tasks, for example, there could be something that can break your apps code because of a third party and it can impact your deadlines but as long as you try to mitigate it by working with your team and keeping them together that is what counts. For your inner peace as well, you can always justify by saying that you did your best and did whatever was possible to avoid certain situations. In an ideal world, starting your day with a list of tasks and then doing them as per priority would really help you in maintaining your pace and meeting the deadlines.

#3: A lot of work but no authority

Product manager role is considered one of the hard roles as the product manager needs to command authority over other roles as product managers direct the team and guide them to build a feature. Product manager is responsible for deciding the features that needs to be built and in order for the team to follow his command the other team members need to trust the product manager’s decision. A product manager has to efficiently communicate with the design team to make sure designs are aligned with the requirements, engineering team to make sure feature are being built as expected and the developers understand what needs to be done, work with marketing team to ensure the GTM and branding is aligned with the product vision, customer success to be aware of the major customer complaints. Communicating with these teams at the same needs the product manager to be aware of what each team is seeking and what precisely to provide them with.

Another common product management challenge is that you need to strategically direct your team’s work but they won’t be reporting to you. You need to guide others and make sure they do what you need them to do in spite of the fact that they have some else as their boss. This would be possible when other team members trust your skills, knowledge and have a healthy relationship with you. So you can have all the hard skills needed for a product manager role, but unless you have the ability to convince others from different backgrounds and build relationships across teams, it is difficult to succeed as a Product manager.

#4:Product vision and strategy

It is important for the product manager to understand clearly the needs of the end users and set a clear product vision and strategy. In some organizations, the key stakeholders could be so authoritative that the product features are built as per their direction without even considering what is the product vision and strategy. This could lead to chaos as the team would be just working as per the stakeholder’s direction and the features built might not be able to address the major pain points of the end user.

If this situation is similar to you, then the first thing to do is to raise your voice and talk to the stakeholder about the importance of the product vision and strategy backing it up with as many examples of facts that you can. It is a brave step to talk against the opinion of the key stakeholder but it needs to be done to avoid all the chaos and set the product development in the right direction.Here is an article to read more on product vision and strategy with examples that you can use to get started.

If you have a set product vision and strategy, then your job as a Product Manager is simpler as you just need to ensure the product development is aligned with the product strategy and make sure everyone across different teams is aware of the product strategy and vision.

#5: Communication is the key

As per my experience as a product manager, during my day to day job routine at least 50% of the time, I am talking to my colleagues from different teams. As a product manager, you need to talk to engineering team, marketing, QA, design, research, customer success team etc hence, one of the crucial soft skills required to be a product manager is an effective communicator and listener.

Listen to others, their point of view and while understanding their needs, you need to organize your thoughts and effectively communicate your point of view. Misunderstanding and miscommunication can cause a lot of problems later on. If you are attending important meetings, ensure to take notes so you won’t forget it later and if needed you can also summarize the meeting notes and send it to everyone. This helps in ensuring everyone is aware of the conclusion from the meeting as there could be people who could not join, secondly clarify any confusion and bring everyone on the same page. As a product manager, it is pivotal to be a good listener as well as a good verbal and written communicator.

#6:Customer satisfaction

A product should be able to solve pain points of the end user, if the product is not able to do this, then the job of the product manager is to analyze and figure out the missing part of the feature. How will you know what is working and what is not? Well, the straight answer is to ask the end users. You can circulate a survey among the target segment and ask questions about the features, this will help in identifying what is working and what is missing. Another useful source could be the customer complaints/feedbacks from customer support department and reviews/testimonials on the app stores (for a mobile app).

It is important to pause and listen to the customers as they are the ones paying for your product. If the customers are not happy sooner or later they will stop using the product and it is in your best interest to improve the product and build features to best resolve the pain points of the users. Although it is crucial to implement the customer feedback but the challenge here is which feedback is important and which one can be given a low priority.

Solution here is to gather as much data as possible from surveys, reviews, secondary research, etc. and then list down the top 3-5 pain points most talked about by the end users. Your target should be to resolve these 3-5 pain points and make sure the customers are getting what they need for their major complaints in order to reduce churn.

Are you ready?

Product manager role can be challenging and sometimes hard to accomplish, but it is also an exciting role. If you acquire the right skills, all you need is the right mindset and understand that you will be playing the critical role of bringing the team together and guiding them towards the goal of providing the customer something useful. I hope the above list of product management challenges and how you can overcome would be helpful for you. Feel free to comment on any other product management challenges that you think should have been included in the list.