7 Ways Learning Code Helps Product Managers Infographic

The role of a product manager relies heavily on strong communication. If you don’t have any type of technical background or understanding of code, your team may feel the frustrations of not be able to communicate with you easily. If coding looks like a completely different language that’s intimidating to you, it’s worth it to invest some time in learning the basics. Here are seven ways knowing code helps product managers:

1. Communication

It opens up communication with your team. Knowing even a bit of code breaks down communication barriers between you and your development team. You will essentially be speaking their language and you’ll be able to hold more productive and meaningful conversations about product development.

2. Understanding

Understand the challenges your team faces every day. Along with stronger communication comes a better understanding. Not only of your engineers, but of their day-to-day lives. This will allow you to understand the challenges they face every day and by having this insight you’ll be able to detect potential problems and how you can reduce roadblocks and help them do their job more effectively.

3. Value

Know how and where you can add value to your team. You need to be able to listen to them, empathize with them and know how and where you can add value to what they are doing. Whether it’s deciding to remove a feature or knowing you need to give them space to come up with solutions, knowing how to code gives you greater insight for each situation.

4. Timing

Gain accuracy in estimating the time it takes to build software. Building a software product takes time. You will never truly understand how much time is invested in building a feature if you’ve never faced the complexity of writing perfect code, and getting everything to work. Sometimes it can take two days to get even a small element to work properly. Having a foundation of code gives you a stronger grasp on how much time a project will take so you can clearly define sprints and help your developers do their job.

5. Tech-Knowledgy

Some knowledge of tech helps you better understand your users. Along with talking to developers, you’ll also be outside talking to customers. So how does understanding code help you talk to customers? It will give you a better idea of what features are more realistic for your product, how long it will take to implement, and how to explain this to customers in a way they understand, because you are a tech and a people person.

6. Rapport

Earn the respect from your engineers. Your developers and you need to speak a common language, and knowing code helps out quite a bit. If you’re able to talk about functionality, interfaces, design, and effects clearly, you’ll avoid a lot mistrust within your team. Your job is to know what you are talking about, and this is where knowing code makes you stand out even more as a PM.

7. The Future

It’s the future. Coding is quickly becoming one of the most sought after skills in the tech industry, and more and more companies are seeing the value in this. Whether it’s to gain understanding, earn respect or know the time it takes to build something, coding is essential to almost every career in tech, and will take you further.

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