Digital
Digital product manager
Drive and manage digital products through the complete product lifecycle.
Summary
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.
Typical job titles include
- Assessment product manager | Associate product manager | Digital product analyst | Digital product manager | Junior product manager | Lead product designer | Product manager
Knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSBs)
K1:
Product development lifecycle and phases over time.
K2:
Business case development and the realisation of benefits to the organisation.
K3:
Purpose of vision and strategy for a digital product throughout its life cycle.
K4:
Approaches to stakeholder management in ensuring the delivery of successful products.
K5:
Approaches for communicating with stakeholders across online and offline channels, including technical and non-technical audiences.
K6:
Approaches to utilise horizon scanning and wider industry trends to inform strategic decisions.
K7:
Methodologies of user or customer research, insights and evaluative research.
K8:
Different prototyping approaches to explore and iterate potential solutions with real users.
K9:
Standards relevant to digital product development in your sector such as: web accessibility (WCAG), ethics, data privacy, and responsible AI principles..
K10:
Importance of data management in accordance with legislation to ensure compliance.
K11:
Importance of security and assurance in digital product design, development and operations.
K12:
Importance of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) when designing and developing digital products, considering the protected characteristics to ensure inclusive, equitable, and accessible outcomes are embedded from the outset.
K13:
Principles of environmental and economic sustainable product development, including the environmental footprint, resource efficiency, and energy consumption throughout the product's lifecycle from inception to decommissioning.
K14:
Approaches to problem solving methodologies for example using team skills, workshop, root cause analysis, research.
K15:
Approaches to delivering products, including Minimum Viable Product and subsequent iterative delivery and optimisation techniques.
K16:
Principles of product ownerships and risk including value, usability, feasibility and viability.
K17:
Different product development approaches including iterative and sequential methodologies and when to apply them.
K18:
Different approaches to planning and development of product roadmaps for both the team and diverse stakeholder needs.
K19:
Different prioritisation techniques, when and how to use them whilst project managing.
K20:
Principles of budgets, costs, value and contract management
K21:
Approaches to a running a live product including incident management and service support.
K22:
Principles of performance measures and their selection to measure the success of a product.
K23:
Data visualisation tools and techniques
K24:
User stories, their format and their value.
K25:
Approaches to gain product adoption, usage and continual development of the product.
K26:
Approaches to planning and organising own learning activities to investigate new trends either political, economic, social, technological, legal or environmental (PESTLE) that may offer opportunities or risks to your digital products
Technical Educational Products
- ST0964: Digital product manager (Level 4) Approved for delivery
- Reference:
- OCC0964
- Status:
Approved occupation
- Average (median) salary:
- £50,945 per year
- SOC 2020 code:
- 2132 It managers
- SOC 2020 sub unit groups:
- 2132/02 IT product managers
S1:
Identify, understand, and define problems, analyse and help to identify a solution for example using methodologies, principles and approaches to resolve the issue.
S2:
Critically reflect on results, data and or insights to identify improvements or problems.
S3:
Utilise iterative and or sequential methodologies to develop products.
S4:
Work within a multi-disciplinary team through two or more phases of the product development lifecycle.
S5:
Manage the operational running of a live product or service.
S6:
Support the development of artifacts for assessment.
S7:
Refine back log and roadmap, and show how it aligns to strategy.
S8:
Identify and segment users, who they are, and what their needs and problems are for example accessibility, based on evidence.
S9:
Define user stories, write stories and acceptance criteria.
S10:
Utilise the vision, goals, KPI’s and objectives for the product or service when engaging with stakeholders.
S11:
Ensure methods and techniques for structured reviews are applied, for example peer review, formal technical review, user research and testing.
S12:
Utilise planning and prioritisation techniques to organise and manage the product backlog to deliver value and benefits.
S13:
Produce reports, roadmaps and plans to report progress and support governance processes and stakeholder management throughout the organisation.
S14:
Identify opportunities to use AI and or machine learning to automate or increase the impact of your digital product such as a built in AI powered assistant, Vibe coding or Spec Driven Development.
S15:
Manage, mitigate and investigate product risks and ensuring product meets the need of its users.
Technical Educational Products
- ST0964: Digital product manager (Level 4) Approved for delivery
- Reference:
- OCC0964
- Status:
- Approved occupation
- Average (median) salary:
- £50,945 per year
- SOC 2020 code:
- 2132 It managers
- SOC 2020 sub unit groups:
- 2132/02 IT product managers
B1:
Professional approach when managing difficult, challenging constraints and or a situations.
B2:
Assumes responsibility for example their actions and objectives are in line with business strategy.
B3:
Conveying a level of confidence and professionalism when engaging with stakeholders.
B4:
Demonstrating a customer first approach in day-to-day activity. For both internal and external customers.
B5:
Influencing others for example encouraging others to take a specific course of action.
Technical Educational Products
- ST0964: Digital product manager (Level 4) Approved for delivery
- Reference:
- OCC0964
- Status:
- Approved occupation
- Average (median) salary:
- £50,945 per year
- SOC 2020 code:
- 2132 It managers
- SOC 2020 sub unit groups:
- 2132/02 IT product managers
