Building internal products

If every company is truly a software company now, it stands to reason that product management will become more prevalent in organizations that develop software for their own use. A common term for this type of software is internal product, implying that you can approach this scenario with an approach similar you would to other digital products. There are of course differences as well, which we highlight in the resources below.

Meanwhile, in product news, AI takes center stage (I know that comes as a surprise) as a competitor to Google Docs promises protection from AI’s prying eyes, two different AI powered search engines take on Google, and Figma walks back it use of AI because it was too similar to apps from Apple.

A guide to internal products. An internal product is software that your organization does not offer for sale to others, but uses to support its various business activities. Internal products generally satisfy the needs of users internal to your organization or enables your organization to satisfy your customer’s needs. In this guide to internal products , Kent McDonald explains when it makes sense to use product management techniques for software your organization builds for itself.

How internal products help Zalando meet customer needs. Internal and customer-facing product management have similarities and plenty of differences. Not only are the context and the audience of your product different, how you manage the project and communicate with stakeholders are also vastly different experiences. Mariana Tibuh, Senior Product Manager at Zalando Lounge, knows just how different product management is for internal products is. Mariana sheds some light on what it means to be a Product Manager for internal products .

Internal product management is hard. How to mitigate this? Many internal teams still use poor tools or no tools to support their daily work. Inefficiency is everywhere, you barely have to pick up a couple of rocks to find it. Unfortunately, the flip side to that issue is that everyone wants everything fixed all of the time. Yet doing that will take forever, not least because new processes are created daily, which always start pretty ‘manual’, even if not quite paper-based. If this feels familiar, then you’ll feel the pressure from stakeholders to get it all done yesterday. So Caspar Mahoney shared a few ideas to help you through the complexities of internal products .

Strategies for keeping your stakeholders educated when building internal products . When building internal products, there are all sorts of internal stakeholders to not just keep informed, but also educated and empowered. In this video, Mike Belsito (Co-Founder of Product Collective) shares some strategies -- while highlighting insights from Vanathy Lakshmi (JC Penney and formerly Walmart) in her past keynote talk at INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Deep Dive: Building internal products. A crucial yet frequently overlooked aspect of product management is creating and optimizing internal products—digital solutions designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization’s workforce. This practice, known as internal product management, is becoming increasingly common, especially in large enterprise organizations. Mike Belsito explores internal product management’s unique challenges and opportunities , examines best practices for success, and considers how this emerging field reshapes how organizations approach their digital transformation efforts.

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This week on Rocketship.fm

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Product Management News: Week of July 8, 2024

Keep your eyes off my docs. Proton, a company founded on privacy announced a new end-to-end encrypted, collaborative document editor that puts your privacy first. Docs in Proton Drive are built on the same privacy and security principles as all their services, starting with end-to-end encryption. Docs let you collaborate in real time, leave comments, add photos, and store your files securely. Best of all, it’s all private — even keystrokes and cursor movements are encrypted. That means the contents of your docs won’t be used as sources for AI hallucinations.

Search with a touch of AI. Perplexity, an AI powered search engine improved Pro Search to tackle more complex queries, perform advanced math and programming computations, and deliver even more thoroughly researched answers. A couple of the key additions include multi-step reasoning and more powerful data analysis, debugging, and content generation. Perplexity introduced these changes to make research faster and more efficient than simply googling.

Search with a touch of AI part deux. Former Humane Strategic Partnerships Lead Brooke Hartley Moy and Head of Product Engineering Ken Kocienda have started Infactory , a kind of fact-checking search engine. One thing that will set Infactory apart from others is the knowledge of when to — and when not to — use AI. Infactory will use large language models (LLMs) to create a more natural language interface with the platform, but it will not use AI in the results themselves. Instead, Infactory plans to pull information directly from trusted resources with citations. The initial rollout will feature subscription pricing aimed at enterprise customers.

Maybe imitation isn’t the sincerest form of flattery. Figma CEO Dylan Field said the company will temporarily disable its “Make Design” AI feature after it was accused of “heavily” training the tool on existing apps. The feature, unveiled at the company’s annual Config conference, aimed to jumpstart the design process by generating UI layouts and components from text prompts but faced criticism after it seemingly mimicked the layout of Apple’s Weather app.

Resources and news curated by Kent J McDonald