Product manager skills matrix template
A free workbook for a product team: discovery, prioritisation, analytics, the business side and the work with engineering and design, rated on one five-level scale. For product managers and the people they build products with.
For a product management or product development team
For a group of product managers, or a product development team where product, design and engineering share the work. The rows follow a product from the first user interview to launch, with the analysis and stakeholder work in between.
Product skills in the template
- Product discovery and user interviews
- Prioritisation and roadmapping
- Writing requirements and user stories
- Product analytics
- Experiment design (A/B tests)
- Stakeholder management
- Business case and pricing
- UX and prototyping
- Technical understanding (APIs, architecture)
- Launch and go-to-market
- Workshop facilitation
The workbook opens in Excel, Google Sheets and Numbers, with 5 example people, a notes column for what the ratings mean, and empty rows to add your own.
Making it fit your team
- Add a row per product area or customer segment someone has to know well. Domain knowledge is usually the hardest gap to close and the easiest to forget.
- Rate designers and engineers who do product work too. Discovery and prioritisation often sit with people who are not called product managers.
- Keep experiment design and analytics apart. Reading a dashboard and designing a test that answers a question are different skills, and teams often have the first without the second.
The rating scale
Every cell is rated on the same five levels, each defined by something you can watch a person do, and a blank cell means “wants to learn this”. The proficiency levels guide explains where they come from.
- 0 None
- Hasn't done it yet.
- 1 Beginner
- Does it with guidance or a checklist.
- 2 Competent
- Does it alone on routine work.
- 3 Proficient
- Handles the unusual cases; others rely on them.
- 4 Expert
- Sets the standard and teaches it to others.
Product manager competency framework
A product manager competency framework sets the level each role — associate, product manager, senior, lead — is expected to reach in each skill. Add an "Expected level" column per role beside the skill names, on the same 0–4 scale, and this template becomes one.
Read it in both directions. Down a person's column, the gaps against their role are their development plan. Along a row, a skill nobody reaches the expected level in is a gap for the team: a hire, a course, or a pairing with someone outside the team.
More templates
- Software engineer skills matrix template
- HR skills matrix template
- Customer service skills matrix template
- Manufacturing skills matrix template
- Training matrix template
- General team template
All of them, and how to use any one as a competency matrix template, are on the skills matrix templates page.
When the spreadsheet stops being enough
Kunska keeps the same matrix live for the whole team: everyone rates their own skills, changes show up as they happen, and the gaps and development plans come out of it. Free for teams.