Marketer / Sales
How to sell what has been built

Software Developer
How to build what is decided

Project Manager
Who and when to deliver

Analyst
How to find data insights

Quality Specialist
How to test what’s been built

Designer
How to design a product idea

Growth Hacking PM in a startup working on a task/project (e.g., increase registrations or first purchase conversion) rather than a new product development.

WHY?

• It allows marketers to benefit from existing CustDev/JTBD and growth skills, which are critical for scaling the product.
• They still need to boost the analytics, tech knowledge, and planning & strategy skills required to deliver their ideas.
• Also, A/B testing skills are crucial for a Growth PM who must try ideas fast.

Tech PM in an infrastructural, backend, or internal product (e.g., an online shop monitoring system or a messaging infrastructure in a chatbot startup).

WHY?

• Developers naturally tick the tech and analytics requirements of PM roles, which are considered the most important in the infrastructural/backend domain.
• Moreover, Tech PMs are still quite rare, so competition should be lower.
• Tech PMs still need to have discovery skills to understand their internal customers, planning & strategy skills to become trusted leaders, and A/B testing experience to be able to experiment with backend features.

PM for concrete projects (for example, roll out in a new country or a new client integration).

WHY?

• It allows Project Managers to show results using existing delivery skills and win time to boost analytics, tech knowledge, and planning & strategy skills required to build their own product later on.

PM DS in more data-focused teams (e.g., Experimenting Tool or Analytics Platform). Or PM in a goal-based project (e.g., increase user activations) where PM works not with a team but rather with a task across the whole company.

WHY?

• It allows analysts to immediately benefit from their knowledge in analytics, A/B testing, and ML, which are core for the PM DS role.
• Since the PM DS role is still quite rare, competition should be lower.
• Once the job is secured, a fresh PM DS should focus on discovery skills to build intuition of what customers need, planning & strategy, and tech knowledge to get things to production.

Junior PM in a startup or large company, especially for products with a clear definition of the end result (for example, “we need to create this particular page”).

WHY?

• QS will be able to ensure that the team has built exactly what is described in the specifications, and for the rest, they need a more experienced mentor.
• Therefore, QS should work hard to develop the discovery skills, analytics, A/B testing, understanding of the technical world, and planning and strategy skills needed to run the product independently.

Junior role in a UX-based product, where customer experience and UI must be absolutely seamless (e.g., a meditation app or Duolingo learning process).

WHY?

• Designers are naturally trained to build a UI that solves customer problems but need a more senior mentor for the analytics and “how” part of the job.
• They should work hard to boost discovery, analytics, A/B testing, tech knowledge, and planning & strategy skills required to define and build new things by themselves.