Ryan (APM class ‘20) shares his thoughts on the traits of a good PM.
I think what generally makes a good product manager heavily overlaps with the four things we score on during the interview.
Product sense — can you understand your customer, distill their needs into requirements, understand your market, and design a roadmap that embodies these things? Do you understand the realities of product teams; how to make tradeoffs, what your team is well positioned to execute, and capping scope creep?
Analytical ability — can you take large, complex topics and break them down into actionable tasks? Can you identify your own assumptions and biases in a problem, and hypothesize potential outcomes and risks of your proposed plan? When you say A implies B, is that true, or did you skip some steps?
Technical acumen — do you understand the details of the discipline you are working in well enough that you can work with individual contributors to understand the problems they face, empathize with them, unblock their problems, and set reasonable expectations? (note, this isn’t always SWE skills. Depends on where you are a PM.)
Communication skills — is what you say clear? Can you answer follow-up questions or rephrase your thoughts? If your team is confused, how do you defuse it? How do you mitigate confusion in the first place?