Profession 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.

Personality Type

• Enterprising / Conventional

Knowledge

• 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.

• 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 hardware specifications

  The characteristics, uses and operations of various hardware products such as printers, screens, and laptops.

• ICT software specifications

  The characteristics, use and operations of various software products such as computer programmes and application software.

• 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.

• 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.

• Advertising techniques

  The communication strategies intended to persuade or encourage an audience, and the different media which are used to achieve this goal.

Skills

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Manage budgets

  Plan, monitor and report on the budget.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Assess ICT knowledge

  Evaluate the implicit mastery of skilled experts in an ICT system to make it explicit for further analysis and usage.

Optional knowledge and skills

Source: Sisyphus ODB