Ground breaking feedback for customers.
Product ideas grow from a confluence of sources. A list of questions, a breakdown of skill sets and insight into behavioral analysis of candidates led to an unusual product: product management skills assessment.
Understanding where your skill set is as a product manager can give them focus on what their next skill focus should be. Over 4000 product managers and related titles have completed the product management skills assessment. The goal of giving customers an insight into their own issues is a powerful growth tool - and leads to additional sales.
This experience has led to further assessments adapted to the situation:
Assessments of trainer skills - ongoing targeted improvement
Assessments of product coaches learning new skills - up to 87% increase in targeted skills
Product Management Skills Assessment.
Key Skills.
The discipline of product management is complex. The first task was to decide on which skill sets were important. In the end, on the basis of behaviors that product managers had to exhibit, these 15 skills best reflected the breadth of skills.
The next step was in creating questions that focused on actual activities that product managers had to work on. Each skill area has a few questions associated with activities that reflect competence in that area.
Assessment.
While this assessment was taken by over 4000 people, the responses were tailored to each individual. The goal of the report was to encourage growth no matter what your score. If you did well, how could you become better? If you didn’t do so well, what were concrete steps to improve?
For corporate clients, the option existed to have the manager of each group set the bar by taking the manager’s version of the test and then comparing it to individuals on their team’s results.
Conclusions.
Product management skills grow over time. Some skills may not be experienced often in a product manager’s career. However with time, the areas of competitive analysis, pricing and retiring your product become skills that product manager’s can use well.
Finally, following a formal PM process and training correlated well with improved scores on the Product Management Skills assessment.
Check out the findings.
Creating a skills assessment that worked well involved careful thought and responsible practice. Relying in behavioral underpinnings and a knowledge of the breadth of the product management practice were key in bringing a high quality resource to the target audience.
The second part was leveraging the information gained to deliver new customers to 280 Group. The marketing group created multiple versions of the core material to attract people to the site and retain thought leadership in the space.
And it all started with a few questions in an Excel spreadsheet.