Amazon Product Manager

What does an Amazon Product Manager Do?

Amazon Product Managers are expected to be excellent planners and be capable of following up on long-term plans. As an Amazon PM, you’ll be expected to work across teams and come up with realistic goals, while ensuring everyone is focused. Amazon PMs do the same work as other Product Managers only that they deal with different processes. Amazon relies on a document driven culture to drive results and as a result, Amazon PMs need to have superb documentation and communication skills. Amazon PMs also work on prioritization of tasks to ensure product development activities are executed in a systematic and organized manner.

Working Backwards

Amazon Product Managers are known to ‘work backwards’ meaning they start with the outcome in mind and work backwards to figure out what must be done to achieve that outcome.  For example, with working backwards, you start by envisioning the press release for the product at launch, and then deriving the plan, resources, and tasks needed to bring that about.

Stakeholder Collaboration

Amazon PMs are expected to work within an efficient collaboration system where they have to communicate with both internal and external stakeholders. Amazon Product Managers have to collaborate closely with technical Product Managers (TPMs), product marketing managers, senior Product Managers and other senior staff members. Also working closely with product teams including product owners, Amazon PMs have to lead the process of figuring out the right set of product features, product strategies as well as make strategic key product decisions.

Exchange of ideas and deliberations on various issues happens during meetings with a purpose to build consensus and synergy. As an Amazon Product Manager, you’re responsible for collaborating with multiple teams including sales and operation, account management, forward logistics and, accounting among others. In addition, you are supposed to meet with retailers to discuss performance as well as conduct extensive analysis to identify product pain points to guarantee a better customer experience.

UX Research and Technical Platforms

Amazon Product Managers need to understand UX research as it’s almost impossible to get a product development process on course without justifying a hypothesis. Ideation is critical with each step carefully evaluated to ensure the right product is developed. Additionally, PMs are expected to have an understanding of technical infrastructure platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and how it’s used in the United States.  Product Managers need to have an in-depth understanding key Amazon products such as Kindle.

Understanding and Interpreting Analytics

Amazon PMs are required to have strong analytical skills considering they have to interact with tons of data. PMs are required to make critical decisions that come with multi-million dollar consequences. Prioritization is a key product management task and to effectively prioritize tasks, PMs require to analyze a lot of data to make the right decisions. Product Managers are expected to research, gather team data and analyze it in order to prioritize products, tasks and features.

Preparing for Launches

As an organization that constantly works on new products, Amazon PMs ensure current products are continuously updated to maximize user experiences. This means Product Managers are tasked with preparations to quickly and efficiently launch new products. As a Product Manager, you have to be ready to participate in various kinds of launches and ensure they happen on time.

Customer Focus

Amazon values customer experience and as a result, its Product Managers work using a backward approach that enables them to design and build products designed to cater for customer needs. Primarily revolving around its clients, PMs need to ensure all their products and processes are customer-oriented. Customer satisfaction is the end-game and therefore, PMs have to collaborate with key teams such as product owners to ensure the right features are built into the final product and all processes conform to customer needs.