Faculty Stories: Benedikt Glatzl, Product Manager

Describe your job:

How did you get into this job?

Which are the top 5 hard skills that someone in your industry should have?

• At least basic coding or technical skills (depending on the field) – you won’t need to code yourself, but you have to understand enough to be able to work with programmers, give them meaningful instructions and estimate the cost and impact of what you want them to build; plus it gives you some credibility (some developers can be princesses when it comes to setting priorities)
• Data analytics – all that matters is that the products you build get traction in the form of sign-ups, sales, retention, user actions, etc. You need to know at any time for any of product, feature and release you put out there who is using it how to what degree and take decisions accordingly. Data is your oxygen.
• Project Management – You are the main planner in the team, so you need to have your roadmaps and everyone’s priorities and resources straight. 
• (UX) Design Thinking & Prototyping – Making an idea work and testable with the least necessary resources is actually a task that requires a lot of exploring and thinking rather than just building building building (as some people mistakenly think). You need to be able to identify the underlying core needs of users, cut to the core value a product idea provides, and make it testable fast and effectively. You need to be comfortable with the idea that a test might look very very different from the product idea you have and might fundamentally change your product and business. 
• Business / Economics – What you build needs to make economic sense. You need to have your financial KPIs straight just as much as your product KPIs. You need to know if your customers are going to provide you with enough revenue to generate profits eventually and how are you going to get there.

Which are the top 5 soft skills that someone in your industry should have?

• Leadership – most product managers don’t have actual people management powers (like performance reviews and firing), so they need to be able to persuade all their stakeholders and motivate them despite not having formal powers. 
• Process facilitation (meetings, workshops, sprints, …) – you are going to lead many meetings, workshops, sprints, hackathons, etc., and need to be able to guide people towards the goals you have in mind for these. 
• Empathy / Intuition – while you are largely guided by data in your detail work, intuition is what helps you decide on fundamentally new concepts and ideas and see what might work with users and what not
• Prioritization and delegation – since this role touches so many areas, it’s essential to prioritize your and everyone else’s time and when to do things yourself or when to delegate
• Sales/Presentation – a lot of your success will depend on how well you can convince people internally (like developers, management, etc.) and externally (investors, partners, etc.) that what you are building or planning to build is of value

When you start a new project, what are the steps you take?

1. 1. Define User Needs: what do potential users actually need
   2. Research: Interview and observe potential users in situations related to the project, read scientific papers on the topic
   3. Refine User Needs: adapt based on the above step
   4. Refine Ideas: check if my product/feature ideas actually hit the needs of users
   5. Create first low-fi prototype: creating a (usually low-tech) user experience that can at least qualitatively test the fundamental product hypothesis (most software and hardware ideas can effectively be tested without writing a single line of code)
   6. Based on the outcome, repeat the above steps a few times
   7. Once needs, product hypothesis & product idea feel refined enough, define core features and create a plan for when they should be implemented
   8. Then start defining details of those core features & have them implemented

What are the reasons you wanted to become part of the faculty of Talent Garden Innovation School and share your knowledge?

How do you keep up with the latest trends?

In your opinion: Which trends will change the future of business for good?

Which are your future work challenges?

Coming to an end: What is the best advice you can give to people that are interested in taking a career in your industry?

• Balance yourself out – if your strength is soft skills, teach yourself coding; if you are technically strong, join a volunteer organization and take on a leadership role there
• Expose yourself to the industry where possible – there are tons of volunteer projects, mentoring opportunities, online resources, internships out there
• Build your own thing – even if it is just a passion project or small side-gig; this way you learn what is needed to start something from the ground up and make it viable

Meet more Faculty Members of our Growth & Digital Marketing Online Course:

• Dominik Berger, Content Strategist and Scientific Coordinator
• Thomas Meyer, CEO and Co-Founder of Toman+Meyer
• Christoph Schachner, Head of Growth at Hackabu

You want to learn more about Growth & Digital Marketing?