Product management is an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning, forecasting, or marketing of a product or products

at all stages of the product lifecycle. The role consists of product development and product marketing, which are different (yet complementary) efforts, with the objective of maximizing sales revenues, market share, and profit margins. The product manager is often responsible for analyzing market conditions and defining features or functions of a product. The role of product management spans many activities from strategic to tactical and varies based on the organizational structure of the company. Product management can be a function separate on its own, or a member of marketing or engineering.

While involved with the entire product lifecycle, the product management's main focus is on driving new product development. Superior and differentiated new products ones that deliver unique benefits and superior value to the customer is the number one driver of success and product profitability. Depending on the company size and history, product management has a variety of functions and roles. Sometimes there is a product manager, and sometimes the role of product manager is shared by other roles. Frequently there is Profit and Loss (P&L) responsibility as a key metric for evaluating product manager performance. In some companies, the product management function is the hub of many other activities around the product. In others, it is one of many things that need to happen to bring a product to market and actively monitor and manage it in-market. Product management often serves an inter-disciplinary role, bridging gaps within the company between teams of different expertise, most notably between engineering-oriented teams and commercially oriented teams. For example, product managers often translate business objectives set for a product by Marketing or Sales into engineering requirements. Conversely they may work to explain the capabilities and limitations of the finished product back to Marketing and

Sales. Product Managers may also have one or more direct reports who manage operational tasks and/or a Change Manager who can oversee new initiatives.

1. Product Development 2. Identifying new product candidates 3. Gathering the voice of customers 4. Defining product requirements 5. Determining business-case and feasibility 6. Scoping and defining new products at high level 7. Evangelizing new products within the company 8. Building product roadmaps, particularly technology roadmaps 9. Developing all products on schedule, working to a critical path 10. Ensuring products are within optimal price margins and up to specifications

Inbound and Outbound Product Management Many refer to inbound (product development) and outbound (product marketing) functions. Inbound product management (aka inbound marketing) is the "radar" of the organization and involves absorbing information like customer research, competitive intelligence, industry analysis, trends, economic signals and competitive activityas well as documenting requirements and setting product strategy.

In comparison, outbound activities are focused on distributing or pushing messages, training sales people, go to market strategies and communicating messages through channels like advertising, PR and events. In many organizations the inbound and outbound functions are performed by the same person. For example, product management deals with the nuts and bolts of product development within a firm, whereas product marketing deals with marketing the product to prospects, customers, and others.