The Supporting Roles in Product Management: Enhancing Your Team's Success

The Supporting Roles of Product Analytics: Unlocking Insights for Business Growth

In the world of product management, while your daily interactions are primarily with designers, engineers, and product marketing managers, there are several other key roles that play a crucial part in the success of your product. These supporting roles might not be dedicated solely to your team but are often shared across multiple product teams, depending on the size and type of your organization. Understanding these roles and how to leverage their expertise can significantly enhance your team's effectiveness.

User Researchers

User researchers are invaluable when it comes to understanding your customers and refining your product. They specialize in both qualitative and quantitative research techniques. Their work is divided into two main types:

• Generative Research: This involves understanding the problems that need to be solved by identifying user needs and pain points.
• Evaluative Research: This assesses how well your solutions address the identified problems.

User researchers help you find the right users for testing, design effective tests, and extract meaningful insights from user interactions. However, it is crucial to engage in shared learning rather than relying solely on their reports. Witnessing user insights firsthand ensures that the learning is internalized by the entire team, fostering a deeper understanding of user needs.

If your organization lacks dedicated user researchers, this responsibility often falls to the product designer, who will incorporate these research activities into their workflow.

Data Analysts

In today’s data-driven world, data analysts play a pivotal role in helping product teams make informed decisions. They assist with:

• Collecting and managing the right analytics
• Ensuring data privacy compliance
• Analyzing data and interpreting results
• Planning and executing live-data tests

Often referred to as business intelligence (BI) analysts, these experts are familiar with the types of data your business collects and how to leverage it effectively. Building a strong relationship with your data analyst can be incredibly beneficial, as they can provide insights that drive product strategy and development.

In larger companies, especially those with significant data needs, data analysts might be dedicated full-time to specific product teams. If your organization lacks data analysts, this responsibility will likely fall on you as the product manager, requiring a significant investment of time and effort to master the necessary data analysis skills.

Test Automation Engineers

Test automation engineers have largely replaced traditional manual QA roles, focusing on creating automated tests to ensure product quality and reliability. There are different approaches to this within organizations:

• Engineer-Led Testing: In some companies, engineers are responsible for both writing code and creating automated tests, covering unit-level tests and beyond.
• Blended Approach: Many companies adopt a blended approach where engineers handle some automated tests, while test automation engineers focus on higher-level automated tests.

Regardless of the model your company adopts, it’s critical that your product team has sufficient test automation to release products with confidence. This involves a significant amount of work, often necessitating multiple test engineers for complex products. 

As a product manager, while you may conduct acceptance testing to ensure features meet expectations, you should not be responsible for the extensive quality testing required for confident releases. Ensuring adequate test automation support is crucial for maintaining product quality and meeting release schedules.

Leveraging Supporting Roles for Success

The presence and utilization of these supporting roles can greatly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your product team. Whether it's gaining deep user insights, making data-driven decisions, or ensuring robust product quality, these roles provide specialized expertise that complements the core functions of the product team.

In smaller startups, where these roles might not be available, product managers and designers often need to wear multiple hats, covering these responsibilities themselves. However, in larger organizations, understanding how to work effectively with user researchers, data analysts, and test automation engineers can significantly improve your product’s chances of success.

By recognizing the value these roles bring and fostering strong collaborative relationships, you can ensure that your product development process is thorough, data-informed, and user-centric, ultimately leading to better products and satisfied customers.