The Future of Product Management is in a?Movement
Gabriel Steinhardt
Founder, Author, Public Speaker. Developer of the Blackblot Product Manager's Toolkit? (PMTK) Methodology
Product Management’s most acute present challenge.
Introduction
The product management domain faces unique contemporary challenges.
Yet, product management does not require technological breakthroughs or previously unbudgeted resources to overcome these challenges.
Reliable and supported principles, tools, and methods for practicing product management are mature and available.
Highly capable and educated human talent is there.
However, something is curtailing the growth of product management and limiting its potential benefits for businesses.
This review presents the product management domain’s most acute present challenge and proffers a way to overcome it.
Orderly Ways
Modern companies’ methods to develop products are deeply rooted in the ways of the distant past.
Significant traits of the orderly, efficient, and tool-based managerial and developmental processes, the enablers of complex manufacturing projects that were the mainstay of factories of the industrial age, are still being practiced today.
Various managerial and developmental job titles and roles in related professional domains, such as program management, product management, project management, and product development, all grew out of the USA’s post-WWII defense industry.
These roles crossed from the defense industry into the business world and were primarily adopted by the technology sector.
These job titles and roles were then fused with the managerial and developmental processes of the time to provide the contemporary methods companies use today to develop consumer and business products.
Over the years, the different professional domains have reached acceptance, maturity, recognition, and subject matter consolidation.
The project management domain is a fine example, with the Project Management Institute (PMI) organization acting as a recognized central accreditor body and the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) as the accepted convention of uniform guidelines to apply project management.
Lag In Product Management
The product management domain differs from other professional domains that have evolved and become better understood.
Product management remains unclear to many to date.
While great strides have been made, and there is some noticeable improvement, the current situation is that there is a profound lack of understanding of what product management truly is.
Consequently, there are far-reaching interpretative variances about the product management domain’s scope, constitution, and even its importance or relevance.
For many, lingering is the pervasive absence of clarity on how to define product management, where it fits, how it interfaces within the organization, and what its goals are.
All this has created a chaotic environment that hinders the contribution that the product management domain can make to businesses and impedes the career progression of product management professionals.
Governance is?Key
All business domains are shaped and governed by foundational rules; the product management domain is no exception.
Without a methodological foundation, unfounded opinions are erroneously presented as tautological positions.
The result is misconceived notions that put forward baseless statements of what product management is.
These notions are based on conjecture, skewed workplace experiences, and mere personal preference or interpretation.
Without offering principles to govern product management, the stated position immediately descends to generalization and consequently considers product management as responsible for everything and anything.
Many companies mistakenly accept and perpetuate unsubstantiated, engrossing interpretations of product management.
Generalization and Trivialization
Generalizing is easy and is also employed by some product management training and certification vendors.
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Generalizing allows the vendor to offer a program that is comprised of disjointed subject matter while using some proprietary but mainly free public-domain content.
Sometimes, a single rudimentary “plan-build-launch” style graphic model is propped on top of the program’s content and misrepresented as a methodology (for competitive purposes) or as an open framework or flexible method (mainly when the offering is incomplete).
Some opportunistic vendors have tried to offer new programs that promote patently skewed perspectives of product management, such as UX Product Management, Lean Product Management, and Agile Product Management. By now, most of these defective ideas have been debunked or are fading away.
Yet again, without a solid methodological foundation, these vendor-specific programs offer very little support to advancing the product management profession.
Social Media
The digital sphere has proven itself as the breeding ground for developing ideas and content.
Profound product management ideas and debates have found sanctuary on various internet platforms.
Still, there is a sense that quality content and authentic thought leadership in product management are being overwhelmed by the noise created by masses of generic and arguably trivial product management content.
The internet has become inundated with scores of posts formatted as “Three tips, tricks, things, mistakes, topics, facts, signs, lessons, questions, reasons, ways, ideas, rules every product manager should…”.
The contributory value of such posts to the advancement of the product management profession is questionable, to say the least.
Joining the cycle that perpetuates the generalization and trivialization of product management are irrelevant product development trends and direct attempts to discredit product management and invalidate its necessity.
These phenomena are particularly evident in the software industry, where product management, program management, and quality assurance are occasionally portrayed as stifling innovation and slowing the pace at which a product can be developed.
This detracting view reflects a power struggle and self-serving efforts by some elements in the product development community to centralize all ownership and control of product delivery in the hands of the development team.
These trends erode the product management domain’s respectability and discourage the necessary cohesion to build a professionally recognized and stable product management community.
But it does not have to be this way.
Quest for a Popular?Movement
Moving forward, the product management domain and its practitioners face many challenges.
Because of the current market structures and forces, it is not likely that a respected central body and a product management body of knowledge (similar to PMI and PMBOK) will soon emerge.
More creativity, enlightenment, and individual contribution are needed on the way to conformity and solidarity in the product management world.
A positive culture based on intellect and rationales must first evolve.
What the product management domain needs is a global movement of movers, disparate like-minded organizations, and strong-charactered individuals who will positively promote the product management domain according to the following three principles:
Product management theory and the derived models, processes, roles, and tasks are the core of product management.
Still, ultimately, the rise of product management is not dependent on techniques, products, or technology?—?it hinges on people.
Summary
Product management has immense potential and a very bright alternative future, but only if it is consistently and correctly understood.
The future of the product management domain is in the hands of forward-looking people who consistently, correctly, and accurately explain product management to workplace peers, executive management, and customers, and participate in or support the emergence of a product management movement.
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Blackblot is the developer of the PMTK? methodology and the premier provider of private training, certification, tools, and expert services for market leaders and innovators worldwide. Blackblot is an IS0 9001:2008 certified business.