A product manager is the intersection between business, technology and user experience. A good product manager must be experienced in at least one, passionate about all three, and
conversant with practitioners in all.
As senior product manager in the Haymarket Consumer Media brand team, you will be responsible for the consumer electronics and football sites – specifically What HiFi?, Stuff TV and FourFourTwo. You will work closely with the editorial, sales, marketing and technology teams to develop ideas and turn them into successful products, collaborating with fellow product managers to promote Agile methodologies and product management as a discipline.
Priorities
This role is central to the development of our digital product strategy. The senior product manager will:
-Take responsibility for delivering key product launches by working with editorial, sales, SEO, UX, marketing and development teams
-Ensure objectives and requirements are captured for new developments and create a project structure for brand team to follow
-Develop and maintain roadmaps across your portfolio of products
-Manage product backlogs in line with business objectives
-Ensure that all development projects have clear ‘success metrics’ and report success/challenge back to the business accordingly
-Work with the brand directors to help define the brand direction and deliver on the agreed strategy
-Help to lead the implementation of Agile methodologies at Haymarket
-Promote a data-driven product management approach to HCM brand teams
-Work with the technology teams to promote the benefits of shared platforms and component reuse in new product development
Product leadership
An HCM product manager has an unrivalled knowledge of his or her product(s) and acts as its
champion, both internally and externally. You have a clear focus on your customer needs through regular dialogue with your audience, as well as a detailed knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor set.
You will work with the brand directors to develop medium and long term strategic vision/aspirations for your product, helping to introduce and champion emerging technologies and working practices where there are proven benefits. Your leadership skills and personal credibility are paramount, helping you to get your ideas across to the wider brand team and ensure that the agreed product vision becomes reality.
The HCM culture is founded on transparency and consensus. You will listen to competing calls for limited development time, prioritise according to high level business objectives and explain your decision in a way which competing stakeholders are able to accept.
The product manager will need to make frequent decisions, sometimes with limited information, with consequences for the final product. The ability to make the best decisions quickly with available information is a critical skill.
You will promote Agile methodology as a source of flexible, transparent decision making, ensuring that all team members are briefed at all times.
Key relationships
You will act as a partner to the editorial, sales, technology and audience marketing teams around you, setting clear objectives and providing the necessary resources to ensure that our audience and client needs are satisfied.
Your strongest relationship is with your editors, with whom you will present a united voice to the rest of the business, including SEO, UX and development and project management leads.
Planning and strategic thinking
Your strong commercial awareness allows you to select from a range of business models and to stay on top of existing models as they develop in our dynamic market environments. You should understand the needs and priorities of our sales teams, ensuring that your products meet their requirements as they evolve.
At the same time, you play an important role in the definition of revenue opportunities behind a proposed product development, using analytics and research to interpret and test our assumptions.
You are responsible for ensuring that these requirements are agreed and understood by all parties involved in all new developments. For big projects, you should create a framework that makes clear where each person is expected to contribute, with objectives and timelines.
Main responsibilities
It is essential that you express your product vision to all stakeholders using a variety of methods (written, verbal, presentation) and act as an advocate for that vision internally. Externally, you should be in constant communication with our audience in order to understand and capture their requirements and needs. It could be verbal (interview or face to face) or using surveys, forums or email.
Person Specification
You will be expected to own the following disciplines:
Competitor and market opportunity analysis The ability to use a wide variety of tools, as well as your own intuition, to understand and assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of your own product and your competitors. These will include feature set, technological sophistication/ suitability, SEO strengths, weaknesses and competitive position, audience and customer opinion.
Roadmap ownership and management The ability to prioritise the product backlog and product roadmap to hit agreed business objectives.
KPIs The ability to translate high level financial objectives into workable KPIs for a product and make them applicable tasks for the development team.
Audience insight The ability to maintain a dialogue with audience/consumers all the way through the product development process to ensure that what’s being built continues to satisfy an audience need, and to influence the product development process to ensure that it does.
Data-based decision making You will champion the principles of user testing, A/B or MVT, and either run such programmes or work with experts who can. You should also see yourself as a centre of expertise in SEO, analytics, Conversion Rate Optimisation, both through your own skills/experience and through collaboration with HCM experts.
Partner management
You will have important relationships with suppliers of data and technical solutions, ensuring that their services are best used to the benefit of your products.
Cost control
You are jointly responsible for costs for your product and must ensure that that proper controls are in place where appropriate. It includes editorial, technology and supplier costs.
Reports
You are responsible for the regular distribution of reports that measure the business performance against agreed critical success criteria. You should seek to implement best practice in communication, sharing ideas with colleagues to ensure your wider team is briefed at all times.