Product management tends to vary greatly by company due to factors including lifecycle stage, structure, and culture, among others. My general definition of product management is as follows:

Product management (PM) is deeply understanding a problem space, prioritizing based on evidence, and aligning internal stakeholders to develop and implement solutions that drive user and business outcomes. 

Marty Cagan breaks down PM responsibilities between discovery and delivery activities. Discovery is focused on determining what problem we should prioritize and the plan to solve that problem, while delivery is focused on implementing that solution. Discovery is all about the “What” and the “Why” while delivery is all about the “How.”

Cagan contends that discovery is the more critical of these two categories of PM activity, and I would agree. While user and business outcomes for a digital product can only be achieved as features are shipped, prioritizing the right problems to solve and developing thoughtful solutions are natural prerequisites for the technical implementation of impactful features. If a well-implemented feature addresses a problem that few users actually experience, then it won’t drive the desired outcomes. This work could have been directed toward higher impact projects.