What is Product Management?
Widely used in start-ups, Product Management is a product-centred and product-led approach to creation and innovation. It is ideally suited to Agile methods and facilitates the emergency of more disruptive approaches to the business model. More and more large companies are adopting it in order to benefit from the way it works, and its values and principles, with the ultimate aim of innovating better, faster and more effectively.
The origins of Product Management
The concept of Product Management first appeared at Procter & Gamble in the 1930s. One of the brand’s product lines wasn’t selling well enough. So a manager decided to put one person exclusively in charge of this line, in order to understand every aspect of it and to be able to monitor its performance closely. This person was called the ‘brand man’.
The brand man had absolute responsibility for the brand, from monitoring sales to managing the product, advertising and promotions. He or she did everything possible to understand the reasons for a product’s success or failure on the market. To do this, he or she carryied out in-depth field tests and interacted with customers. The forerunner of the Product Manager was born.
What is Product Management?
Product Management (PM) is a function within the company’s organisational process, dealing with all stages in the product life cycle: planning, production, marketing, etc. The function also works on the Business Model, and collects and processes data, in order to provide information about the product to the company and to all those involved in the project.
Managing a product using PM encompasses everything to do with the product: from the creation of a concept, through to a study of the target audience, to its development, launch, promotion and maintenance. The aim of this approach is to add value to the product for the target customer, while ensuring that the product is effective and profitable by studying the KPIs specific to the product at every stage in its life cycle.
To get a good understanding of a product (or a stage in a project), there’s nothing quite like a good old-fashioned Lean Canvas to quickly summarise all the issues:
This is often the first step in the creation of a Business Model at the beginning of a Start-Up. However, it is also very useful at other stages in a company’s life, even when it is already well established and embarking on a new project. By exploiting this tool, the company can refine its ideas, its strategy and its implementation at a glance, or even decide to pivot and change course if it realises that the initial idea will not succeed were it to remain on the existing course.
It’s also worth noting that Product Management is primarily concerned with the “For What” (the “For Whom” quickly follows). The “How” becomes more natural and takes up the baton later on.
The advent of Product Management in the digital sector
Over the last few years, digital companies have increasingly been shifting their design and innovation model from a silo-based organisation to one more centred around the product.
Historically, digital projects (still referred to as IT projects) were the preserve of IT departments or IT teams. This had its advantages: good knowledge of technical tools, a very pragmatic vision, etc. Yet sometimes a bit too much, which meant that we talked more about the ‘how’ than the ‘what’ or the ‘for what’.
Companies began to see the drawbacks of this organisation and some were tempted to shift responsibility for digital projects to the communications and/or marketing teams. This also had its advantages: the focus was less on the technical side, and an effort was made to be a little closer to the needs of the business. The disadvantage was that the projects were sometimes more chaotic, a situation where it was more difficult to define expectations, scopes and constraints, especially technical ones.
This contributed to the creation of very strong silos and teams that no longer spoke to each other; a major brake on innovation within companies.
Then, with the advent of start-ups, another approach emerged. These new companies are built around user needs, and are obsessed with getting their products validated by the market. And because they don’t have the time, they go directly to the cutting edge and eliminate as much as possible of the “organisational dross” that Lean Startup refers to. This is how digital product creation began to develop in companies.
In fact, in the early 2000s, the DDD (Domain-Driven Design) approach was born. This vision of software design helped to refocus the product on the needs of the business (the “what for” before the “how”). Product Management fits in very well with this method, because the aim is to get all the stakeholders on the same boat. From marketing to finance to developers, everyone is involved in the implementation of the product and speaks the same language.
Product Management activities
The activities covered by Product Management are quite vast and varied, ranging from strategy to design to technology.
The objectives of Product Management
Product Management has several main objectives.
Define product strategy
The first and foremost objective of Product Management is to define a differentiating product strategy that offers unique value to the product, adapting it to the needs or desires of the target customers.
This involves :
- understanding your targets, their needs and expectations, in particular through analysis of personas,
- analysing the market and the competition to understand current market coverage and the opportunities that exist,
- identifying a differentiating positioning so that you stand out from the competition.
Aaaahhhhhhh that good old “Lean Canvas”! 🤤
Know your business
The product is the articulation point of the team (the user is also part of it!). First and foremost, we need to gather the constraints and expectations of each business that revolves around the product, closely or remotely. In this way, everyone is aware of the repercussions of their actions on all the other links in the chain. And so that everyone is speaking the same language, the Product Manager adopts the language of the various stakeholders and disseminates it, so that everyone understands each other and is united around the same issue: the PRODUCT.
Defining deliverables
In order to successfully implement the product strategy, it is then necessary to clearly define the deliverables expected from the product team, as well as the implementation schedule. This includes clarifying the idea, defining the roadmap, prioritising the development stages, prioritising the key functionalities of the final product, defining the testing phases and putting the product online and/or on the market.
Managing the project
In order to deliver an operational product that fulfils expectations, Product Management is largely responsible for managing the project. Through cross-functional leadership, the Product Manager will communicate with the various functions working on the product (design and development teams, sales teams, marketing, etc.). This is a key aspect that should not be overlooked and involves communicating the product roadmap, keeping everyone informed of updates and ensuring that the various players adhere to the roadmap.
It’s tempting to say that “the product is the team”, but for this to work, you also have to remember that: the team is the product!
Updating and optimising the product
A fifth objective completes the Product Management approach. In order to remain competitive and in tune with user expectations, it is essential to update or renew the product, its features and functionality.
If our product does not adapt quickly to emerging needs and new trends, it will soon be replaced or considered obsolete.
The Product Management professions
Product Management is a global approach in which human and technological resources converge to innovate, while putting the end user at the heart of the company’s strategy. What makes a good product team is its multidisciplinarity. Ideally, it brings together all the professions in the digital value chain: a development team, of course, but also the magic triptych: Product Manager, Product Owner, Product Designer.
Product Manager, the orchestra conductor of the product team
The Product Manager is a true orchestra conductor. They play a key role in product development because they have a cross-functional vision of the company’s challenges, and are able to manage all aspects of the product (desirability, profitability, feasibility, responsibility).
Product Designer, carrier of product value
The roles of the Product Designer include understanding user needs, leading co-design workshops involving a wide range of job functions, and creating and testing prototypes, before subsequently implementing the interfaces in a global library made available to the development teams.
Therefore, the Product Designer must take into account the customer experience, the company’s requirements and objectives, as well as the opinions and needs of the other members of the product team. The aim of the Product Designed is to add value to the digital product.
Product Owner, the guarantor of the product
The Product Owner is a key profile in an Agile team! They are responsible for defining and designing a product. In short, the Product Owner is responsible for the overall management of the product backlog, i.e. all the developments to be produced. They have a cross-functional view of the product as a whole, but also of the complexity of the various parts, their business priority, etc.
The tasks of the Product Manager
The Product Manager generally reports to the marketing or technical department, or to general management. This role is just as important in start-ups as in large groups.
A Product Manager manages a product throughout its various life-cycle phases. This is a strategic element for the company because it benefits from better monitoring of its products. The Product Manager’s mission is to design, manage and deliver a product in order to achieve the company’s objectives and meet the needs of the market.
The Product Manager must be able to judge the overall performance of the development team: is the speed in line with expectations? Is the team of sufficient size? Are all the necessary profiles represented?
The economic performance of the digital products they manage is also a key concern. They report on developments and progress along the roadmap that they are responsible for to their overseeing management.
What is Agile Product Management?
Agile Product Management involves adopting a flexible approach rather than a traditional one.
The idea is to make the project run more smoothly while retaining the same resources. In Agile Product Management, the team spends less time defining the product in advance and planning. It is more open to changes that may occur as work progresses, based on better knowledge and understanding of the end user, in particular via user testing, because of a new strategic objective, etc.
The product is defined by an overall vision that grows as the project progresses, taking into account the findings of the various teams. This approach ensures that customer expectations are taken into account and that the team is better able to adapt to retrospective knowledge.
Thus, Agile Product Management involves guiding the development team through all the cycles, while maintaining the product vision and integrating customer information as work progresses. An Agile vision of Product Management allows the project to pivot and change direction more quickly, if the direction initially taken was ultimately not the right one. Conversely, the inertia of a “siloed” vision where “everything has been planned in advance” will make any change of course much more costly because ultimately no project goes “as planned”.
The Product Manager is capable of projecting himself into subjects as varied as eco-design, accessibility, respect for privacy, etc. in order to anticipate them rather than having to suffer and react to them.
Product Management, at the heart of the Digital Factory
Product Management is part of a new organisational model: the Digital Factory. The Digital Factory is the new weapon for business transformation: a global approach in which human and technological resources converge to commit companies to an in-depth digital transformation, to innovate better and faster, and above all to centre the value of the digital product around a team, and ultimately around the end user!
