Product Tales: Traits of “Hands on” Product Manager

In my first job as a software engineer at a big MNC in India, I had met someone who wrote a windows service program that would periodically remind him of the tasks he had to complete through out the day. I loved the program, set out to write one for myself, alas! I could never complete. He was a fresh graduate like me, had similar interests, was in similar teams— just one difference. He was more “hands on” than I was. Since then I decided to take a “hands-on” approach to my work.

Being hands-on….

1. Makes you more dependable in a team
2. Makes you get more things done in less time than others
3. Builds a formidable “moat” for you
4. *Most importantly* its a sign that you love what you are doing.

A hands-on product manager is a catalyst for a team — fostering innovation, efficiency, and unparalleled understanding of the product lifecycle. So if you wanna be a hands-on product manager, you should…

A hands on Product Manager

1. Be comfortable with excel: Excel is the go to tool for most PMs, its technically probably worlds first “no-code” platform. At the very least you should be able to build pivot tables, write macros and be able to use basic functions like vlookup etc. At advanced levels you can do linear programming and scenario analysis. Visual story telling is another big area where excel comes in very handy — heatmap for metric variations, charts for making complex information more accessible.
2. Be able to extract data from database: Most companies will provide access to “read replicas” to PMs. You should be able to write database queries to extract data. At basic level you should be able to know how to structure a SQL query to retrieve specific data from a database table. Filter the data or even understanding different types of joins (e.g., INNER JOIN, LEFT JOIN, RIGHT JOIN) to combine data from multiple tables based on related columns.
3. Be able to create a prototype in Figma: “Prototypes are the hot knife that cut through the butter of bureaucracy — scott belsky”. From creating images in MS Paint to, be able to create full fledged prototypes in Figma — PMs lifes have been made much easier with advent of these tools. Prototypes not only help in getting a buy-in but also provide 1000x more clarity to dev teams and design teams.
4. Be able to setup dashboards using PowerBI (or Tableau):PMs should be proficient in choosing the right charts, graphs, and visuals to represent data accurately and to tell a clear story. This is especially helpful if you are running experiments and want to monitor the performance of your experiments everyday. Knowledge of sharing options within Power BI, such as sharing dashboards, reports, or workspaces with team members and stakeholders will help with collaborations across teams.
5. Be able to work with tools like JIRA/AzureDevOps: PMs should be able to configure boards, create swimlanes, set filters, and customize boards to visualize and manage product changes effectively. These tools are also very handy when it comes to communicating sprint plans to other stakeholders. Once you setup automated notifications and updates, you bring in the transparency, trust and confidence in product roadmap execution.

If there are other skills that you think PMs should have please mention them in the comments.