How Product Management Is Changing — And Will Change More
By Zoe Aerin
Zoe Aerin is a product manager, specializing in growth. According to Zoe, The product manager of 2025 will appear considerably different from the product manager of 2023. Your role will become more focused on outcomes and strategic planning, and abilities like as storytelling, empathy, and strategic alignment will become more important to success than tactical concerns that may fall to product owner or product operations responsibilities.
There will be a stronger emphasis on bringing the “voice of the customer” and a “outsidein” perspective to the business, and product management will become a function heavily founded in customer data analytics and insights.
Organizations must rethink the skills, talents, position definitions, and team structures that distinguish excellent product managers from the competition. Far too many businesses rely on a simple seniority-based career progression rather than one based on the acquisition of new skills or the extension of power inside the firm. The latter method is useful since it provides a comprehensive picture of the skills needed to improve the hiring process and team composition. Organizations can use this to rearrange the product management team to include more specialists with specialized talents rather than generalists who try to handle everything.
To ensure product managers acquire or maintain an advantage as we approach 2025, product management teams should:
Identify personal and intrateam skill gaps and devise strategies to close them through specialization, training, or new recruits. Eliminate seniority-based career advancement in favor of focusing on the breadth and depth of abilities that individuals bring to the organization.
Encourage increased product strategy ownership and a whole-product approach — the when, where, and how customers derive value from their product experiences.