Senior Product Manager can often be thought of as a group product manager

Use and implementation of product leadership roles like Senior Product Manager can vary a lot, as we’ve previously noted. We’re going to take a look at what Senior Product Manager might look like in an enterprise with mutliple business areas.

Senior Product Managers can be thought of as ‘group product managers’. They manage a group of things that share commonalities, users, or interdependencies. For example, there may be a grouping of things around sign-on, and a Senior Product Manager might provide the overall value strategy for 2-5 things in this space. They’re likely to have a Lead Product Manager for their business area.

Senior Product Manager is an interesting point in our career pathway, as it is the tipping point between product management and product leadership. We’re still expected to work directly within delivery teams, but also expected to work with our Lead Product Manager to influence and support overall strategy for our business unit and our profession. We’ll need to maintain our ability to work in a delivery team in the ways we’ve learned as an Associate Product Manager and Product Manager, but increasingly need to develop your product leadership skills in order to focus on the needs of the broader organisation.

The GOV.UK role description for Senior Product Managers is great, clearly setting out expected skills, and the level of expertise required in each of these skills.