What is Product Management as it relates to software development, digital?
This is a question with quite a few answers so I've decided to lay out some of my thoughts. This will be a sketch of what may become a White Paper.
For those readers who look to me for retail, digital interactions for businesses, future technology ideas, etc., this post may not be for you unless you are curious what the process is behind the work that drives those items.
What does the title mean?
Product Manager - Product Owner - Product Team Lead
Most shops run some form of agile development method in today's world. There are many flavors of that some looking more like traditional waterfall SDLCs, some running in a Lean Startup way, etc. Most software development is attempting to create value for some user who may be a customers The Product world bridges the gap between the users/customers and the engineers who build them. I like to say, a Product Manager is most focused on everything leading up to the point where a team of engineers has to build something.
Product Manager
A manager should be managing something. Some process. Adding value in some way. The Product Manager role is about as diversely defined as anything I've ever heard of. Some are "Strategic" product managers focusing solely on understanding the market, crafting the product vision and managing the product roadmap. Some then handoff to a Product Owner who manages the SDLC process writing user stories to ensure the software gets written. Some do the user stories themselves. Some have more senior Product Managers owning the roadmap and only contribute ideas in to it, maybe a Director. Some even own the P&L though that is rarer. Most have some ownership and often a bonus structure emphasizing the profit their product brings to the company.
Product Owner
This is the one that creates the most controversy outside looking in. A shop decides what the role is and often can't imagine anything else. However, outside of that shop you can find many flavors of Product Owner. I'm going to split it in to two definitions.
Product Owner - Senior Product Manager
This flavor is most often a Product Manager who writes user stories. However it may also indicate a very senior Product Manager, more of a General Manager who owns the P&L.
Product Owner - Agile
Epics, Themes, user stories, the backlog are all the items this Product Owner focuses on. Often this flavor does not have direct ownership of the roadmap and is not concerned with P&L or profitability of the product. This Product Owner focuses on managing the SDLC from the perspective of product. In many ways this person is the modern Business Analyst.
Product Team Lead
This is another one that might have radically different flavors. The "Team Lead" indicates someone who may be a group manager, maybe managing other Product Managers. However some shops place this role as the literal SCRUM master focused on managing the SDLC from the perspective of product.
Where do the opportunities lie with these definitions?
A complete vision of Product Management for software must be end-to-end, from the customer to the engineers. Along the way there are opportunities for better or worse fits. Here are a few:
Lean Product Management
If you need quick, iterative, product development this should be your focus. It is an extension of the more familiar Lean Startup methods that focus on bringing value to market quickly. This is a mindset that marries with agile product development and should result in increased throughput from the engineering team. Where it varies slightly from Lean Startup is mostly on the focus of the Product Team and how to best utilize an agile development shop. Otherwise, it is the same mindset you'll find throughout Lean Startup thinking. You the Product Manager only has a hypothesis of what the customers in the market will find valuable. Working with customers you should be able to scratch out an idea that may have value. Create a simple mockup and get it in front of some customers for feedback. Put together your best informed guess, make it as small as possible to add value, and write the user story to get the engineers to build it. Then get it in the hands of those customers who most wanted the new product/feature. Then iterate based on how they actually use it and don't be afraid to scrap it all together.
Here's one I got from a CTO recently. Take the typical agile user story, now recognize you really want to get a MVP to market as quickly as possible to begin the iterative process of identifying value for your customers. Do you, as the Product Manager, really need 5-10 acceptance criteria or is there actually 1 or 2 that most likely result in a minimally viable product (I'm looking at you InsightSquared)?
Your embrace of Lean Product Management should be a natural fit to the company's culture, maturity of product line, and SDLC processes.
Roadmap
If your product line is young you should have a flexible roadmap under most circumstances. In some cases the clients and the capabilities of the industry map out the roadmap to great detail even for young products (I'm looking at you TRUX). In others there is no defined idea of where the value is and flexibility is a must. Finally, if your product is mature and well-established you may want to introduce a quantitative approach to product roadmapping where a variety of data inputs might result in a top 10 list of product features to focus on.
Customer Interactions
The definition of a customer and what constitutes "sales" can vary greatly but basically these are the people paying money that keeps your company around and the sales team is focused on growing that area. If its a platform for social connections you may have a "growth" team instead of traditional sales (I'm looking at your Alignable). The Product Team that has incentive to see their product profitability rise will likely have interactions with Sales and Sales Engineering to help close deals and make the customers happy. They may be out at trade shows as the voice of the product and bringing back their interactions to be the voice of the customer. Maybe thought leadership can be displayed in the space by blog posts, white papers, or a CAB - Customer Advisory Board.
UX
The User Experience a customer has with a product can make or break a product depending on a variety of factors. Generally business power users are more forgiving of lesser quality UX design. They just want the results afterall. However, UX is important in this area as well as you may inadvertently hide features in a poor UI and lose customers over the poor experience. Further, as the product matures it is likely features will be added and a lack of UX vision can result in some kind of Frankenstein product with a poor UX that results in lost customers. Generally, the more mature a market space the more important UX is to differentiate a product and the more consumer-facing a product is the more important UX is. Product comes in to play as owners of the roadmap and the overall product vision. Have knowledge of UX and have a plan, but be flexible in achieving your goals and remain focused on the customer. A company that isn't growing is probably declining. A product who's sales are not climbing is probably seeing diminishing sales.
There are a thousand more points that could be made on this subject but this outline is my start at defining a modern Product Management shop and helping folks understand the varying definitions for the titles out there and the varying processes available to them.
Happy Reading,
J.W. Gant
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