Digital product manager

This occupation is found in a wide and diverse range of public and private sector organisations, from tech start-ups, government departments to multi-nationals. Any organisation of any size that creates or uses digital products such as systems, services, apps, websites, software in a digital environment will benefit from this occupation. Example sectors include banking and finance, telecoms, public sector, gaming, medical and pharmaceutical and cyber security.

The broad purpose of the occupation is to drive and manage digital products through the complete product lifecycle. Digital products are typically systems, services, apps, websites, software in a digital environment, starting from inception of the product, through to prototyping and gaining customer or user feedback. Digital and technical teams use modern or cutting-edge technology to deliver great products for users and create value for their businesses. This occupation needs to have a holistic understanding of the tech, the data and the users and bring that together to direct the team to deliver the best for the product. They continually gain user feedback on the digital product to maintain and make enhancements and improvements. They are the voice of the customer, interpreting the need behind the request and prioritising any changes needing to be made and with the product being digital they ensure changes are made continually. Changes can be weekly or even daily as new code can be changed quickly and immediately consumed by users. The occupation manages the product to the end of its life, decommissioning the system or service and the technology that sits behind it. An example in the public sector, where the public accesses the government service online to tax a car, the occupation has developed a service replacing a paper process with a wholly digital service. Digital Product Managers are responsible for Government services we regularly use such as Gov.Uk, renew your passport, book your covid vaccination. In the private sector the occupation owns applications and services used by a commercial or public sector organisation’s staff, their users, or citizens. This could be across installed applications, mobile applications, web sites and web applications across nearly all market sectors.

In their daily work, an employee in this occupation interacts with a wide range of people both inside and outside of their digital and technical development team and their organisation. These include members of their multi-disciplinary digital and technical development team (Software Engineers, Testers, Business Analysts, Delivery Managers, UX Designers), customers or internal users, subject matter experts across their organisation or sector, commercial teams within their organisation, other members of the digital product community including peers and leaders and any stakeholders interested in or with influence over their digital product.

An employee in this occupation will be responsible for the end-to-end lifecycle management of their digital product(s). They are responsible for prioritising user driven and commercial changes which leads to the prioritisation of the work of the digital and technical development team. They will be responsible for ensuring they deliver value for money but are unlikely to directly manage a budget. They will be physical or virtually office based and may have occasional direct working with customers or users. They are unlikely to have complete autonomy over their product, they will need approval or agreement from senior product colleagues in key decisions, including strategic direction. They are unlikely to be a line manager as they be will junior members of the digital product team. They are likely to report to a more senior member of the digital product team. However, some organisations may have different structures and they could report to a more senior leader in another areas.