For example, Spotify's North Star would be User Time Spent Listening Amazon's would be Number of Monthly Purchases, etc.įor most product managers, monitoring product health will likely occur at the same time or soon after checking/responding to emails.

What constitutes an appropriate North Star depends on the company and the product. When it comes to a typical day, a product manager will likely check on the product's North Star along with supporting metrics.Ī ' North Star' metric is the primary metric used to gauge and predict the long-term success of a product.

As a result, a product manager will often work alongside data analysts and data scientists to ensure that a product is performing as it should and driving customer success. Of course, monitoring product health is a very data-driven process. In many cases, PMs will have some sort of dashboard or analytics at their disposal to help them do this. Monitoring Product Health Transistor by AlexManokhiįrom there, product managers will typically check on product health in some way. Other days, emails may be from upper management communicating new deadlines or from one of the dozens of teams that a product manager will routinely work with. Some days, a product manager may find urgent messages in their inbox requiring immediate attention. Most of this communication will occur via emails or messages, especially given how widespread remote work has become for many. Product management is a role that requires working extensively with cross functional teams.Ĭommunication is vital for product managers. Like most white-collar workers, many product managers start their days by checking their emails, texts, Slack messages, etc. With that being said, let's take a look at a potential day in the life of a product manager: Morning Checking & Responding to Emails Transistor by Elisabet Guba This phase aims to understand what features users really want and value the most to implement this understanding in the final product. This is where product managers must communicate with customers and users directly, gather customer feedback, and analyze how users use products developed by the company's competitors.

Note: The Initial Discovery Stage, or simply 'product discovery,' is the first phase of a product's lifecycle.

Product manager definition