Product Management Statistics: 20+ Eye-Opening Insights

Top Product Management Statistics

The demand for product managers is higher than ever.

But, this doesn’t mean that there’s a clear understanding of the tasks attributed to the product management position, or the difficulties a product manager may face.

The following product management statistics may open your eyes to the conceptions and misconceptions of product management.

The importance of product management:

• A fully optimized product manager could increase company profits by 34.2%

• 81% of respondents said they measure the success of their products

• 54% of product people are responsible for a mix of different type of products

The challenges for product managers:

• The top 3 challenges for product managers are competing objectives in the organization (56,4%), lack of time (50,8%) and lack of role clarity (35,0%)

• 25,3% of product managers say that the company strategy is not very clear or not clear

• PMs spend 52% of their time on unplanned „fire-fighting“ activities

The job market for product managers:

• The average salary of a product manager in the US is 111,000 U.S. dollars. In Germany, it’s 66,000 euros and in India, it’s 37,000 U.S. dollars

• The top recruitment source for product managers is the personal network (60%)

• 40,5% of product managers work in Software

Common problems for product managers:

• 39% say they worry about missing launch dates

• 42% say they worry about the difficulty to add new features because of the customers’ demand to support old features

• 28% worry that product launches do not meet management expectations

The role of a product manager:

• 56,5% say that product management is established but is still developing inside their organization

• 43,3% say that product managers are seen as leaders and key differentiators inside their organization

• 26,6% say that PMs have a clear role, but others don’t understand it

• 46,2% of product managers are individual contributors, 43% are managers

• 69% believe that product management is a leadership role

21% of products fail to meet customers’ needs

According to a 280 group survey, respondents say that 1 out of 5 products fail to meet the customer needs, which makes a well-performing product manager even more important.

To meet your customer needs, you have to be aware of the problems your customers are facing and how your product can solve these problems. Failing to meet customer needs could be related to some skills product managers have. As from the survey:

56% stated that the skills of their product manager leave room for improvement

According to the report “Challenges in Product Management”, 56% of respondents stated their product manager’s skills as average or below average, stating that there is room for improvement.

These improvements could lead to meeting their customer needs in more than 4 out of 5 products.

41.2 % of respondents stated that product management within their company isn’t effective, which is related to the skill level of their product managers.

34% of departments report to product management

This percentage is relatively high, compared to the percentage of managing (23%) or marketing directors.

If you are looking for more authority from the different departments, you can use these stats to convince your top management how reporting routes should run through the organization, and what kind of prominent role you as a product manager can take.

Only 5% of product managers know how to code

Luckily for product managers, it’s often not mandatory to know how to code. Only 5% of product managers know how to do this.

But this makes it even more important to communicate with your different teams to get your idea implemented in the product. You have to trust in your team’s abilities.

If you do know how to code, this could give you an advantage when you want to apply for a product management job in software development.

As a product manager, you should never doubt your own value. For some management teams, it’s hard to overlook the possible opportunities a well-functioning product manager will bring.

Although the value and the exact role of a product manager might be undefined in some companies, well-developed product management can improve your product and alignment with your customers.

We hope you enjoyed learning about these product management statistics! Do you know about important statistics that we forgot to cover? Let us know in the comments!

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