ICT product manager

ICT product managers analyse and define current and target status for ICT products, services or solutions. They estimate the cost effectiveness, points of risk, opportunities, strengths and weaknesses of products or services provided. ICT product managers create structured plans and establish time scales and milestones, ensuring optimisation of activities and resources.

The following job titles also refer to ICT product manager:

ICT products manager
ICT products managers
IT product manager
ICT product managers
IT products manager

Bachelor’s degree is generally required to work as ICT product manager. However, this requirement may differ in some countries.

ISCO skill level is defined as a function of the complexity and range of tasks and duties to be performed in an occupation. It is measured on a scale from 1 to 4, with 1 the lowest level and 4 the highest, by considering:

• the nature of the work performed in an occupation in relation to the characteristic tasks and duties
• the level of formal education required for competent performance of the tasks and duties involved and
• the amount of informal on-the-job training and/or previous experience in a related occupation required for competent performance of these tasks and duties.

ICT product manager is a Skill level 4 occupation.

These occupations, although different, require a lot of knowledge and skills similar to ICT product manager.

ICT project manager
telecommunications manager
ICT security manager
IT auditor
ICT account manager

These occupations require some skills and knowledge of ICT product manager. They also require other skills and knowledge, but at a higher ISCO skill level, meaning these occupations are accessible from a position of ICT product manager with a significant experience and/or extensive training.

This knowledge should be acquired through learning to fulfill the role of ICT product manager.

Systems development life-cycle: The sequence of steps, such as planning, creating, testing and deploying and the models for the development and life-cycle management of a system.
Ict hardware specifications: The characteristics, uses and operations of various hardware products such as printers, screens, and laptops.
Cost management: The process of planning, monitoring and adjusting the expenses and revenues of a business in order to achieve cost efficiency and capability.
Ict software specifications: The characteristics, use and operations of various software products such as computer programmes and application software.
Advertising techniques: The communication strategies intended to persuade or encourage an audience, and the different media which are used to achieve this goal.
Ict system user requirements: The process intended to match user and organisation’s needs with system components and services, by taking into consideration the available technologies and the techniques required to elicit and specify requirements, interrogating users to establish symptoms of problem and analysing symptoms.
Ict infrastructure: The system, network, hardware and software applications and components, as well as devices and processes that are used in order to develop, test, deliver, monitor, control or support ICT services.
Product comprehension: The offered products, their functionalities, properties and legal and regulatory requirements.
Ict market: The processes, stakeholders and the dynamics of the chain of goods and services in the ICT market sector.

These skills are necessary for the role of ICT product manager.

Assess ict knowledge: Evaluate the implicit mastery of skilled experts in an ICT system to make it explicit for further analysis and usage.
Manage schedule of tasks: Maintain an overview of all the incoming tasks in order to prioritise the tasks, plan their execution, and integrate new tasks as they present themselves.
Conduct impact evaluation of ict processes on business: Evaluate the tangible consequences of the implementation of new ICT systems and functions on the current business structure and organisational procedures.
Perform risk analysis: Identify and assess factors that may jeopardise the success of a project or threaten the organisation’s functioning. Implement procedures to avoid or minimise their impact.
Manage budgets: Plan, monitor and report on the budget.
Create project specifications: Define the workplan, duration, deliverables, resources and procedures a project has to follow to achieve its goals. Describe project goals, outcomes, results and implementation scenarios.
Plan product management: Manage the scheduling of procedures which aim to maximise sales objectives, such as forecasting market trends, product placement, and sales planning.
Provide cost benefit analysis reports: Prepare, compile and communicate reports with broken down cost analysis on the proposal and budget plans of the company. Analyse the financial or social costs and benefits of a project or investment in advance over a given period of time.
Monitor technology trends: Survey and investigate recent trends and developments in technology. Observe and anticipate their evolution, according to current or future market and business conditions.
Manage contracts: Negotiate the terms, conditions, costs and other specifications of a contract while making sure they comply with legal requirements and are legally enforceable. Oversee the execution of the contract, agree on and document any changes.
Perform product planning: Identify and articulate market requirements that define a product’s feature set. Product planning serves as the basis for decisions about price, distribution and promotion.
Define technical requirements: Specify technical properties of goods, materials, methods, processes, services, systems, software and functionalities by identifying and responding to the particular needs that are to be satisfied according to customer requirements.
Perform market research: Gather, assess and represent data about target market and customers in order to facilitate strategic development and feasibility studies. Identify market trends.

This knowledge is sometimes, but not always, required for the role of ICT product manager. However, mastering this knowledge allows you to have more opportunities for career development.

Incremental development: The incremental development model is a methodology to design software systems and applications.
Innovation processes: The techniques, models, methods and strategies which contribute to the promotion of steps towards innovation.
Iterative development: The iterative development model is a methodology to design software systems and applications.
Ict quality policy: The quality policy of the organisation and its objectives, the acceptable level of quality and the techniques to measure it, its legal aspects and the duties of specific departments to ensure quality.
Spiral development: The spiral development model is a methodology to design software systems and applications.
Ict sales methodologies: The practices used in the ICT sector to promote and sell products, services or applications such as SPIN Selling, Conceptual Selling and SNAP Selling.
Outsourcing model: The outsourcing model consists of principles and fundamentals of service-oriented modelling for business and software systems that allow the design and specification of service-oriented business systems within a variety of architectural styles, such as enterprise architecture.
Hybrid model: The hybrid model consists of principles and fundamentals of service-oriented modelling for business and software systems that allow the design and specification of service-oriented business systems within a variety of architectural styles, such as enterprise architecture.
Waterfall development: The waterfall development model is a methodology to design software systems and applications.
Engineering processes: The systematic approach to the development and maintenance of engineering systems.
Ict security legislation: The set of legislative rules that safeguards information technology, ICT networks and computer systems and legal consequences which result from their misuse. Regulated measures include firewalls, intrusion detection, anti-virus software and encryption.
Service-oriented modelling: The principles and fundamentals of service-oriented modelling for business and software systems that allow the design and specification of service-oriented business systems within a variety of architectural styles, such as enterprise architecture and application architecture.
Quality standards: The national and international requirements, specifications and guidelines to ensure that products, services and processes are of good quality and fit for purpose.
Software design methodologies: The methodologies such as Scrum, V-model and Waterfall to design software systems and applications.
Ict project management: The methodologies for the planning, implementation, review and follow-up of ICT projects, such as the development, integration, modification and sales of ICT products and services, as well as projects relating technological innovation in the field of ICT.
Rapid application development: The rapid application development model is a methodology to design software systems and applications.
Business process modelling: The tools, methods and notations such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), used to describe and analyse the characteristics of a business process and model its further development.
Open source model: The open source model consists of principles and fundamentals of service-oriented modelling for business and software systems that allow the design and specification of service-oriented business systems within a variety of architectural styles, such as enterprise architecture.
Agile development: The agile development model is a methodology to design software systems and applications.
Prototyping development: The prototyping development model is a methodology to design software systems and applications.
Saas (service-oriented modelling): The SaaS model consists of principles and fundamentals of service-oriented modelling for business and software systems that allow the design and specification of service-oriented business systems within a variety of architectural styles, such as enterprise architecture.
Devops: The DevOps development approach is a methodology to design software systems and applications focused on the collaboration and between software programmers and other ICT professionals and automation.
Ict process quality models: The quality models for ICT services which address the maturity of the processes, the adoption of recommended practices and their definition and institutionalisation that allow the organisation to reliably and sustainably produce required outcomes. It includes models in a lot of ICT areas.

These skills and competences are sometimes, but not always, required for the role of ICT product manager. However, mastering these skills and competences allows you to have more opportunities for career development.

Perform online data analysis: Analyse online experiences and online data for purposes of understanding user behaviour, triggers of online attention, and other factors that could optimise webpage development and exposure.
Interact with users to gather requirements: Communicate with users to identify their requirements and collect them. Define all relevant user requirements and document them in an understandable and logical way for further analysis and specification.
Manage localisation: Modify content or a product for the transference from one locale to another through the use of content translation or localisation service providers.

1330 – Information and communications technology service managers

 

 

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References

1. ICT product manager – ESCO