An analogy to explain product management to a 5 year old can be –

Consider yourself (5 year old kid) as a product and your mother the product manager.

Now, consider what all tasks a mother undertakes w.r.t to her 5 year old kid. She would wake her up in the morning and help the child with daily chores – brushing, bathing, having breakfast, sending her to school. These daily routine tasks are similar to the daily metrics monitoring that a PM does for her product to ensure that the product is working properly and not running into any issues.

The mother will take precautions to ensure that the child does not faces any health issues like avoiding a lot sweets, ice creams etc. that could harm the child’s health, and if there are any health issues, she would be vigilant to notice them well in adance and prevent the cause from wrosening further.  This set of tasks could be analogous to the overall user journey check of the product to ensure that the users are not facing any issues, and if any bugs are reported w.r.t the product, the product manager ensures that they are resloved well in advance.

The mother would also dig deeper to analyze what could have led to the childs’s health issue and ensure that the same is not repreated which is similar to RCAs that PMs do to ensure that the same product issues donot occur again

The mother would also ensure that the child revises whatever is taught in the school so that the child can learn and progress at a steadfast pace. This task could be similar to the market research, customer interviews, and analysis that PMs do to ensure that their products are progressing regularly and simplifying the pain points of the customers.

All the above mentioned set of tasks together comprise of product management