As product managers, we are the ones who are in charge of developing a product that our customers are going to want and our competitors are going to fear. There is no one right way to develop a winning product, rather there is a particular set of skills that every product manager has to develop in order to create products that will be successful. What You'll Find Inside: PRODUCT MANAGERS NEED TO KNOW WHAT THEIR COMPANY'S COST OF CAPITAL IS THE SECRET TO CREATING A CUSTOMER-FACING PRODUCT ROADMAP HOW TO CREATE A PRODUCT TIMELINE THAT WORKS WHAT DOES THE INTERNET OF THINGS MEAN TO PRODUCT MANAGERS? It all starts with understanding just exactly how much a product is going to cost to create. Cost of capital is a term that the business side of the house uses to talk about such things and product managers need to understand what it means and how to use it. The teams that we'll assemble to create our products will be diverse in many different ways. One way will be age. This means that a product manager is going to have to get good at finding ways to have different age workers all get along with each other. When you start to understand all of the different things that a product manager has to do at the same time in order to develop a product, you'll start to understand why checklists are a product manager's best friend.

Developing a product means that the product manager is going to have to know when the product will be ready to be sold. This means that a timeline for the product will have to be both developed and then adhered to. Just creating a product is not the end of the story. There will be more versions that will have more functionality. This means that a product manager will have to develop a roadmap and share with both the development team and existing and potential customers. As we enter the age of digital product management, product managers need to know that they don't have to solve all problems by themselves. They can look at other successful products, such as the iPhone, for tips and hints at how to develop products that will be successful. In some markets a single product starts to dominate that market.

As product managers we'd all like to emulate this success and that's why it's important that we study brands such as ESPN in order to understand how they have been able to achieve the success that they have had. Change is a constant part of what it means to be a product manager and the arrival of the internet of things promises to change everything. This means that we need to understand what it is and how it will impact us. Communicating with our customers is a key part of being a product manager and the Twitter micro blogging service has become an important tool. However, as it continues to evolve we need to look closely at it to see if it is still useful for us. Entering new markets is how product managers can ensure that their products continue to grow. Amazon's recent entry into the grocery business can show us how to accomplish this. For more information on what it takes to be a great product manager, check out my blog, The Accidental Product Manager, at: www.

TheAccidentalPM.com.