https://www.reforge.com/blog/product-specializations

With contributions by Ravi Mehta (Reforge Partner/EIR, former CPO at Tinder, former VP Product at Tripadvisor, former Product Director at Facebook) and Crystal Widjaja (CPO at Kumu, former Reforge Partner/EIR, former SVP Growth and Business Intelligence at Gojek)

In the tech world, the Design, Engineering, Marketing, and Sales functions have each had specialities for years. For example:

Design → Product Design, Brand Design, UI/UX, Research, Interaction Design, Service Design
Eng → Frontend, Backend, Mobile (iOS/Android), Web, Full stack, Payments
Marketing → Brand, Content, Performance marketing, SEO, CRM/Lifecycle, Marketing Ops, PR, Product marketing
Sales → Inbound, Outbound, SDR/BDR, AE, Technical Sales, CSM

But, Product Management has not yet defined specialities. This leads people to think a Product Manager (PM) is a PM — meaning we hastily assume all PM roles are created equal and the best PMs are those who know everything across different types of product work/stages. That's simply not the reality of the situation since Product specializations are emerging informally as a mess. When we do a quick search right now, we find Masterclass looking for a Payments PM, TikTok searching for a Growth PM candidate, and ClassDojo hunting for a 0 → 1 Product Leader. There's little understanding of what these PM roles mean and how each is unique, but needed, at different types of organizations.

Since distinct PM specializations haven't been formally codified, we'll lay them out in this article:

First off, we'll introduce problems that arise when we believe all PM roles are created equal
Then, we'll cover the 4 types of product work
From there, we'll define the PM specializations with key skills and examples
We'll end with emerging specializations and what the next Product specializations could be

Problems that arise when we think all PM roles are created equal

Most people looking to understand the Product world, and even early career PMs, think that there's a standard type of PM. They believe all PM roles are created equal and successful PMs are experts in the same areas. There are clear problems that arise when we think this way:

Tools don't transfer - PMs apply the same tool to all situations