The Product Career Path
Understanding Roles, Competencies, and Growth Opportunities
For the past few years in the African tech ecosystem and the product space, I’ve witnessed a recurring challenge: the misuse of nomenclature in product job titles and, more importantly, the misunderstanding of how product roles should evolve. Often, there’s confusion about the function of key roles, when they are needed, and what competencies they require.
Take, for example, a recruiter reaching out to me on LinkedIn, asking for referrals for a Senior Product Manager role. Upon reviewing the job description, it was clear that the position resembled more of a Vice President of Product role than an actual senior product manager. In another case, a startup hiring an Associate Product Manager (APM) - They called it “Product Management Trainee” to independently drive an entire product without any senior Product Manager to guide or mentor them—a setup bound to fail both the APM and the product.
This confusion about roles isn’t just a matter of titles. It impacts how product professionals grow in their careers and how organizations support their development. Building a clear and structured product career path ensures individuals know how to progress, what competencies to develop, and how their roles fit into the bigger picture of delivering user and business value.
In this article, we’ll break down the typical product career path, the competencies required at each stage, and how individuals can grow into more senior roles while driving success.
The Controversial Product Owner Title
Before diving into the Associate Product Manager role, it’s essential to address the Product Owner title—a frequent point of confusion. In many organizations, the Product Owner and Product Manager roles are treated as separate entities, but this split can often create more problems than it solves.
Why the Product Owner Role Is Problematic
In an effective product team structure, it’s counterintuitive to separate the person responsible for discovery from the person responsible for delivery. Yet, this is the common division of labor:
Product Manager: Focuses on customer and business needs, strategy, and user research.
Product Owner: Engages the engineering team and handles execution.
This setup creates a disconnect that undermines the principles of an empowered team. Discovery and delivery are intertwined processes, not separate ones. When you split responsibilities between a Product Manager and a Product Owner, you risk:
Fragmented Decision-Making: A lack of alignment between strategy and execution.
Inefficiency: Engineers working without a clear understanding of the problem they’re solving.
Disempowerment: Teams feeling disconnected from the larger purpose of their work.
The Ideal Approach
In empowered teams, the Product Manager is responsible for both discovery and delivery. They are the central figure connecting user needs, business goals, and engineering execution. By keeping these responsibilities unified, the team can align around shared goals and deliver meaningful outcomes.
Associate Product Manager
The Associate Product Manager (APM) role is a foundational entry point into product management, designed to help individuals learn the fundamentals while contributing meaningfully to their teams. APMs handle smaller projects or specific features within larger initiatives, ensuring these efforts address user needs effectively. They engage in tasks such as understanding customer pain points, analyzing market trends, writing user stories, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver solutions. Far from owning entire products, APMs work under the guidance of experienced Product Managers who mentor and prepare them for more significant responsibilities.
Success in this role hinges on competencies like execution, curiosity, collaboration, data-driven thinking, and problem-solving. APMs are not just tasked with delivering features but are also encouraged to learn strategic thinking through mentorship. This guidance ensures they understand the broader context of their work while gaining exposure to the complexities of product management. In an empowered team, APMs contribute by managing specific deliverables, freeing senior members to focus on high-level strategy.
When structured effectively, the APM role becomes an essential component of a strong product team, serving as a pipeline for future product leaders. Organizations that avoid overloading APMs with responsibilities beyond their level, while providing clear guidance and opportunities to grow, set both the individual and the team up for long-term success.
Product Manager
A Product Manager (PM) is the linchpin of a product team, balancing user needs, business goals, and technical feasibility to deliver impactful solutions. They work with designers and engineers to define and execute features aligned with the broader product vision. While their responsibilities often center on shorter-term deliverables, such as managing roadmaps and feature execution, their role extends beyond operational tasks. A PM must strategically shape the vision for features while tactically ensuring smooth delivery, avoiding the pitfall of becoming overly focused on day-to-day execution at the expense of long-term strategy.
Effective PMs bridge the gap between tactical execution and strategic vision, ensuring alignment across teams and feeding insights into broader product strategies. Splitting responsibilities between a Product Manager and a Product Owner can create disconnection and inefficiencies, as discovery and delivery are inseparable. Consolidating these roles under the Product Manager title enables professionals to develop both strategic and operational expertise, creating meaningful career growth opportunities and ensuring cohesive product development.
Senior Product Manager (SPM)
A Senior Product Manager (SPM) oversees more complex products or broader product scopes, representing the pinnacle of the individual contributor track in product management. Unlike roles involving people management, the SPM focuses entirely on solving challenging product problems and driving innovation. They must balance strategic responsibilities, like defining long-term product direction, with operational execution, ensuring smooth delivery of impactful solutions. This role is especially suited for those who thrive on tackling difficult problems and charting new territory within their organization.
SPMs are critical to a company’s success, as they operate with greater independence and often lay the groundwork for new product lines or innovations. Their entrepreneurial mindset and ability to align product initiatives with business goals make them indispensable. Much like an architect in software development, the SPM’s role involves creating the structure for product scalability and success rather than managing others. With their unique blend of strategic vision and operational execution, Senior Product Managers help organizations grow by focusing on impactful, forward-looking initiatives.
Director of Product
A Director of Product is a critical role in scaling organizations, typically found in larger companies where the product scope and team size demand additional layers of leadership. As a company grows, the Head of Product may become overburdened by the sheer number of direct reports and the increasing complexity of managing multiple products or features. The Director of Product steps in to provide the strategic alignment and operational efficiency needed to connect their product group back to the overarching portfolio vision.
This role marks the first level of people management in the product career path. Directors oversee a group of Product Managers, often aligned around a specific product line or portfolio. They are responsible for crafting the strategic roadmap, typically with a year-long time horizon, while ensuring that their team is operationally effective. By aligning Product Managers around clear goals and priorities, the Director ensures that the team focuses on the most impactful initiatives, driving both business outcomes and team performance. This balance of strategic oversight and operational coordination makes the Director of Product a vital architect in scaling successful product organizations.
VP of Product
The Vice President of Product is a key executive role that oversees the strategy and operations for an entire product line, bridging company goals with the growth of their product portfolio. This position involves setting the vision and goals for the overall product, informed by insights and data from their teams. In large enterprises, VPs are responsible not only for the delivery of product features but also for the financial success of their product lines. Alignment across all VPs within a company is critical to ensuring a cohesive and successful portfolio of products.
In smaller companies, the VP of Product is often the highest product role, overseeing one or a few product lines. They may take on more tactical responsibilities to ensure the product grows and launches effectively. However, a successful VP must primarily focus on strategy, driving growth plans and aligning product efforts with broader business objectives. To scale effectively, they hire leaders to manage tactical and operational tasks, allowing them to focus on long-term innovation and organizational alignment. This strategic focus positions them for potential growth into the Chief Product Officer role, which is predominantly strategic.
Chief Product Officer (CPO)
The Chief Product Officer (CPO) is a transformative executive role responsible for overseeing an organization’s entire product portfolio. As companies grow, expand into new markets, or manage increasingly complex product lines, the need for a dedicated leader to align product strategy with business objectives becomes essential. The CPO ensures that all products contribute to the company’s vision and financial goals, making them instrumental in scaling product teams and fostering cross-functional alignment. Unlike VPs of Product, who focus on individual product lines, the CPO operates at a macro level, crafting strategies that drive portfolio-wide success and long-term business growth.
The CPO also serves as the primary advocate for product strategy at the executive level, frequently engaging with the board of directors and other C-suite leaders. This requires translating product decisions and outcomes into financial and operational terms that resonate across departments. By leveraging strong communication skills, the CPO aligns leadership around a shared vision and fosters organizational cohesion. Empathy and resilience are vital for navigating the challenges of cross-departmental collaboration, while the ability to inspire confidence enables them to unify teams under a common purpose. Their strategic influence is rooted in building trust and effectively managing competing priorities across a growing organization.
Beyond aligning the organization, the CPO is relentlessly focused on data-driven decision-making and market responsiveness. They monitor the performance of the product portfolio, identifying opportunities for innovation and improvement while holding teams accountable for measurable results. In a rapidly evolving market, the CPO’s ability to adapt strategies ensures the organization stays competitive. As the pinnacle of the product career path, the CPO sets the standard for creating a product-led culture, driving innovation, and positioning the company for sustained growth and market leadership.
Core Competencies That Drive Product Career Growth
Success in a product management career is built on a foundation of core competencies that remain relevant at every stage, regardless of role or level of seniority. These competencies not only enable effective performance but also position individuals for continuous growth and leadership opportunities.
Collaboration is essential for working seamlessly with cross-functional teams, including designers, engineers, and stakeholders. Building strong partnerships ensures alignment and fosters a shared sense of purpose, enabling teams to deliver impactful results.
Communication is the backbone of product management. The ability to clearly articulate ideas, strategies, and decisions to diverse audiences—ranging from engineering teams to executive stakeholders—is critical for gaining buy-in and maintaining alignment.
Adaptability is vital in navigating the dynamic nature of product development. Whether responding to shifting market trends, user needs, or organizational priorities, successful product managers remain flexible and proactive in their approach.
Outcome Orientation ensures a focus on delivering measurable results rather than getting bogged down by tasks. Prioritizing business and user impact allows product professionals to consistently drive value and achieve strategic goals.
Empathy underpins every aspect of product management, from understanding user needs to fostering healthy team dynamics. By seeing through the lens of customers and colleagues alike, product managers can build solutions that truly resonate and inspire collaboration.
Avoiding Career Path Pitfalls
Navigating a product management career comes with its challenges, many of which stem from misaligned expectations and organizational practices. One common pitfall is misaligned titles, where roles do not match their responsibilities. For instance, hiring for a Senior Product Manager but expecting them to take on the strategic responsibilities of a VP creates confusion and sets the individual up for failure. Clear alignment between job titles and responsibilities is essential for both the individual and the organization to thrive.
Another challenge is overloading junior roles. Associate Product Managers (APMs) and Product Managers (PMs) are often tasked with responsibilities beyond their scope, such as leading major product initiatives without sufficient support. This not only risks burnout but also hinders the development of foundational skills critical for their growth. Organizations must ensure these roles are given appropriate challenges and guidance, creating an environment where learning can flourish.
A significant yet often overlooked factor in product career growth is the lack of mentorship. Every stage of the product career path benefits from mentorship and coaching, providing the guidance necessary to navigate challenges and build strategic thinking. A mentorship-rich environment not only accelerates individual growth but also ensures the organization nurtures a strong pipeline of future leaders.
Conclusion: Building a Meaningful Product Career
A product management career is more than a ladder to climb—it’s a journey of growth, learning, and delivering increasing value. Understanding the unique responsibilities and competencies required at each stage empowers professionals to chart a clear path to success while enabling organizations to structure roles that foster growth and impact.
Whether beginning as an APM or aspiring to become a CPO, success lies in consistently aligning efforts with user needs and business goals. For organizations, the key to building meaningful product careers is offering well-defined roles, appropriate support, and opportunities for mentorship. When an organisation cultivates this balance, both individuals and teams will thrive, creating products that matter while advancing the field of product management.