I've recently gone from Developer to Technical Product Manager, and I believe the following traits are important: 1) Communication on both a technical and prod

I've recently gone from Developer to Technical Product Manager, and I believe the following traits are important: 1) Communication on both a technical and product level. This allows you to act as a bridge between sales/marketing/management and the developers. See #2 2) Speaking two languages: Code and Product. This is where being a former developer comes in quite handy, as you can only learn Code through writing it, but you can implicitly pick up the Product by thinking like a non-techie and paying attention to what they care about. 3) Keeping a focus on the big picture during a project duration. As a Product/project Manager, you need to understand timelines beyond 3-6 months and make sure you're not shooting yourself in the foot for later. This is tangential to what you may have read in the Pragmatic Programmer. 4) Product/Project Manager can be squishy terms, meaning that the responsibilities can vary by company. Often you'll be left to ensure all the ends of a project are wrapper up: testing, documentation, communication on releases, etc. There are probably many more things, but those are off the top of my head. Good luck!