Product Management-as-a-Service (PMaaS) and Product People

Intro

I’ve had many discussions (and sometimes heated debates) about the benefits of an effective Product function to an organisation. And for every 10 people who see the positives -- whether that function is a one person product hero or a team of people--there are always some who don’t see the benefits or haven’t had the good fortune to experience them.?

So I figure that writing up a breakdown of different aspects of Product and their benefits gives more value than trying to spread the gospel via 1:1 conversations.?

But before we dive into Product and its role as part of successful digitally focussed organisations I’ll quickly address the slightly clickbaity part of this article. The title. Specifically the inclusion of ‘asS’.

Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS)

The ‘as-a-service’ model rose to prominence in line with the rise of cloud computing when customers were given more direct, frictionless access to technologies over the internet. So rather than purchase a package of software that requires physical installation at each user's machine, a neatly portioned part of that software is made accessible over the internet and usually paid for via a subscription.?

This is the Software-as-a-Service or SaaS model that most of you reading this will have used in some form, whether it’s a Google account for Email and document storage or maybe it’s Netflix to watch TV and Movies on demand for a subscription

NOTE: I’m not sponsored by Google or Netflix. These are just the first 2 examples that jump to mind but there are literally hundreds of thousands more...But if anyone from Google or Netflix is reading this, feel free to drop me a message ??

In addition to SaaS there are many other ‘as-as-Service’ models offering things like access to cloud storage and networking resources (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), building, management and running of platforms on the cloud (Platform-as-a-Service) and--one that I’m most familiar with--access to the provisions which facilitate the end-to-end execution of financial products and services (Banking-as-a-Service).

But referring back to the title, is it possible to servitise a service? I think it is. And when framing it about Product and Product Management it’s about understanding what outcomes an organisation is looking for or things it needs and knowing what repeatable, exportable structures can be deployed to achieve that outcome. For example, an early stage startup looking to get external investment might want to prove that their customer numbers and product have great growth potential. In this instance a servitisable Product function across the 4 key areas, People, Process, Strategy and Tooling, can be leveraged to:?

1. Surface the active customer numbers whilst implementing a product metrics dashboard?
2. Highlight key revenue figures tied to these customer numbers
3. Review market and competitors to extrapolate future customer numbers and potential growth
4. Benchmark against similar players in the market to prove they are ahead of their competitors

This might just seem like the job of a perm employee in the Product team but sometimes there's a lack of capacity in the team OR an urgent need to get a specific thing done. In the same way an engineering function might have the capability to build out a specific bit of functionality but instead looks to use an external service (which is why Banking-as-a-Service has been popularised in recent years), product capabilities can also be utilised ‘off the shelf’. For a specific objective it can be quicker and more effective, especially in the short to medium term, to get a service externally rather than try and execute it yourself.?

So now the clickbait has been addressed, let’s cover something fundamental. What is Product Management? What makes a good Product person? And why is it a key part of organisations building digital products…??

NOTE: If you already have a good understanding of the Product function and where it sits in organisations then feel free to skip the following primer and jump straight to the People section

What is Product Management?

When I give a formal definition of Product Management I usually go for something like ‘The function that sits at the intersection of Tech, Design and the Business and is core to the success of a product from Ideation & Discovery to Growth & Scaling and everything in between’.?

Pretty succinct right?

But in addition to a roll off the tongue definition it’s good to think about what the outcomes of Product should be to better understand the purpose of the function.?

This might sound obvious but the main objective of the Product function is to help the team build the best possible product with the people & tools available and to ensure the customer's voice is heard throughout the product development lifecycle. But this doesn’t mean things like revenue, customer retention etc don’t matter.?

On the contrary.?

In the journey to build the best product possible, the Product team has to ensure, Acquisition, Activation, Referral, Retention and Revenue are part of the product otherwise?

1) it won’t get into customers hands and therefore you won’t have enough informed insights AND?

2) there won't be enough funds to allow for continuous iteration and improvement.

NOTE: I may cover product metrics in a separate article

For people new to Product it might still be tough to picture exactly where it fits in when it comes to building a digital platform. So to make it a bit simpler I’ll go through some of the more familiar functions and how Product binds them together.

Business/Business Sponsor

In a startup environment this will probably be the CEO, COO, Sales, Marketing and Finance teams. All the parts of the organisation working on growing the business, financing the build and growing and securing their future. In a larger organisation, instead of the CEO and COO, it’ll likely be a department head/team lead/business sponsor as well as individuals working on sales, marketing and finance. They’ll work to ensure there is structure around what is being built, the project is financed and budgeted for, there’s reporting to senior leadership around progress & blockers and major milestones are met.

Technology

Essential for any digital build is the tech function. This isn’t just the Front End or Back End developers writing the code to build the platform. It’s Testers, Platform Architects, Infrastructure/Hosting experts and Tech team leads. All of these folks help architect, build, test and launch the actual product. Without them the functional product wouldn’t exist.

Design/UX

For both internally facing and customer facing products, the Design team ensures the look and feel of the product is right, fits with the stakeholder/customer profile and essentially maximises the advocacy and effectiveness of the functional parts of the product. Design not only shapes the look and feel of the product, but in doing so will be part of research into the market and speaking to customers to understand things they are used to, the type of interactions and designs that make it easier to use the application. As well as this they have to think about accessibility functions like inclusive colour schemes i.e. No bright reds on blacks.

So where does Product sit in all of this? Well the answer, as you can see below, it’s right in between.

Product

The product function binds these core areas together.?

Working with the Business, Product helps research the problem area, define what success looks like and implement the right framework to help hit these milestones.?

Working with Technology, Product will perform analysis to define what features and workflows look like, do discovery and create specs that engineers can understand and build from.

Working with Design, Product simplify what the digital proposition is, create wireframes, assist with prototypes, refine the structure of the app and work with design to create the tone and messaging of the product.

In addition to supporting the overlapping functions in key areas Product, as the name would infer, itself has responsibilities that are central to creating a successful product:

• Leading Research into competitors, consumers, market which serves as the bedrock for initiatives
• Driving Strategy for the product ensuring customers problems are being solved and the product evolves and improves over time
• Communication in all directions of the organisation. Between internal teams and ensuring the research and strategy are communicated effectively but also communicating important messages OUT to customers
• Communication INTO the organisation FROM customers is also a key product responsibility and why Feedback Management is another key part of the Product team. Feedback Management also covers indirect feedback from things like in-app measurement like retention numbers, page usage etc

People

I started with the PMaaS acronym and mentioned that the key areas of Product as I see them are People, Process, Tools and Strategy. And I’ve loosely touched on some of these areas when describing where the Product function fits within organisations. But rather than rushing to cover all these important areas, I’ll dive a bit deeper into an area that is often misunderstood and sometimes misrepresented. Product People.?

Product People Foundations

The different types of Product people and their respective responsibilities is probably the blurriest area of Product in my opinion. Especially for people new to it. Whether it’s assuming all Product people should be able to read and write code, or misclassifying a Product Manager as a Product Owner there are many misnomers.?

Some of this is down to a lack of understanding, but much of it is down to the fact that different sized organisations have different structures and therefore roles can mean different things to different people. So to start, it’s more effective to talk about the foundational qualities that most Product people should have and only then outline the different roles and responsibilities.

Technological Basics?

When I say basics, I’m talking about a basic understanding of things like release processes, different areas of the tech stack (hosting, core engine of the product, interfaces, how data is stored, APIs, Acronyms etc). As a very loose analogy, would you be able to design and build a brand new bike if you didn’t know how gears worked? Traditionally it’s been thought that the best product people have to come from a tech background but this isn’t entirely true. Yes, if you’re working on a highly technical product (in terms of its functionality and the parts that the end customers see) then having a technical background is highly beneficial but most Product people can do a great job with a foundational understanding of tech.?

Market Knowledge?

Whether market knowledge is gained through practical experience, through research, OR both. All product people should have a base knowledge of the domain the product is in. In the digital retail banking space for example having knowledge about the wider market, competitors, products that competitors offer and not to mention the endless acronyms is essential.

Customer Focus?

This might be the most obvious but sometimes overlooked one. It’s the Product function that should ensure the customers are part of the product journey from ideation, when research and potential customers will be surveyed and interviewed, all the way to launch when the finished product gets into customers hands. This understanding of the customer goes hand in hand with market knowledge.?

Emotional Intelligence

This is the biggest one for me.?

Product has to speak with a broad spectrum of people internally and externally. Internally having to converse with engineers working on a build as well as senior execs whilst being empathetic to the needs and wants of both and building those relationships is tough but is a lot easier for someone with higher EQ. Externally, understanding the customers especially in direct interviews is critical and a higher EQ individual will understand when to probe on a question, when to hold back and pick out the key problems the customer is facing.

This isn’t the exhaustive list of qualities needed but is core to what makes a good product person. And to double down, I believe EQ is the most important. All of the truly brilliant Product people I’ve worked with were highly emotionally intelligent beings. You know who you are ??

Product Roles

Before I look at differentiating between the different roles in Product, I want to outline a little visual aid that I like to use when thinking about different roles. And in explaining this aid I’m going to get a little nostalgic...?

Picture this. I’m a secondary school kid. It’s noon on a Sunday. I’ve just finished off all my homework for the week and got my log book signed by my Mum. The reward? 90 mins on the Sega Megadrive!! And my go to game at the time, Pro Evolution Soccer, or International Superstar Soccer as it was called then. This was a classic arcade football game with a few different modes but one of my favourites was the Career Mode.?

In Career Mode, you’d start by selecting a baseline of a player including a position and some attributes. Then over time you’d train to improve specific attributes i.e. Shooting, Tackling, Jumping etc ready to make an impact in a match and shape the type of player you become.?

“What the hell does this have to do with Product?” I hear you ask. Well, the player attributes visualisation looked like the below and it’s how I like to think about the different people in Product.

In the game I’d take a quick glance at the shape above and be able to quickly tell where my strengths were, what position would fit best with my skills and see areas I needed to improve if I wanted a slightly different role. And when playing in normal mode I could use this to pick the right players for how I wanted to play e.g. Defensive, Counter Attacking, Possessions

And when looking at the different types of people within Product I like to visualise a similar view to display key attributes.

For me this view is a great starting point when talking about different Product people because it shows the spectrum of attributes that can evolve over time and acts as a guideline to show the type of attributes required for the different roles.

So with that brief look into my childhood and an overview of this visual aid, let’s look at some of the roles within product starting with the more senior end.

Different Roles within Product

Chief Product Officer (CPO) - Overall strategy and direction for the product and product team. In a Product function of more than one, the CPO is responsible for overall product strategy, often has management responsibilities, is responsible for communication to senior leadership team/C-level team, makes the high-level decisions when it comes to prioritising big ticket items in the product and any changes in direction. Many early stage companies will create the CPO position once their Product function is a bit more mature as in early stage startups it’s the CEO/Co-Founder who does much of the product work.

Head of Product - Usually segmented into a specific area of the product in organisations with a wide product offering and will be responsible for managing that part of the product. For example, in a large established digital bank, there will likely be a Head of Product for Lending, Head of Product Savings etc as there are many products that as part of those areas that serve different purposes and will likely have slightly different strategies. In organisations that don’t have such a wide offering and have a smaller product team in a flatter structure, the Head of Product role and CPO role (sometimes called Director of Product/VP Product) can be the same person.?

Product Lead - Another role that gets slightly blurry in smaller organisations but in larger Product functions has its own place. A Product Lead might lead a whole area of the product, like the Head of Product, or, working underneath a HoP, manage a specific part of that area. Using the challenger bank example, working under the Head of Product for Lending, a Product Lead might be in charge of all Loans products, features and execution in that stream. Another Product Lead might be in charge of the Credit Card stream within the Lending area as the customer base, type of products and journey are likely to be different and require their own dedicated management. As part of their responsibilities, a Product Lead will be in charge of directing their particular stream as well as the key Product tasks like keeping up to date with trends and competitors in their stream, coming up with solutions within their stream that solves problems or improves the customer experience.

Product Manager - The most common title in Product Management. Product Managers usually have the widest breadth of skills as they have internal and externally facing responsibilities and most PMs cover the full spectrum of the product lifecycle from idea conception to deployment to marketing. Product managers are the bridge between feature requests and tangible guidance for the engineering team to build those features, they organise market and customer research, will communicate some of the strategy and direction of the product, own the scoping and creation of success metrics and how those metrics are reported. And they will also put their own stamp on the product by coming up with new and innovative features in the product to solve customer problems. Product Managers on the whole are less likely to have management responsibilities hence the position below the other roles outlined but a Senior PM may manage others depending on their experience and the shape of the team.?

Product Owner - Some organisations have dedicated Product Owners where usually product ownership tasks are part of Product Managers. The product owner part of a PM involves organising the backlog and writing requirement tickets in a tool like Jira, communicating any changes in product priority for the engineering team, staying on top of Jira ticket maintenance, communicating granular feature delivery dates etc. Depending on the team size it sometimes makes sense to have this as a dedicated role as the work required to maintain a healthy stream of work for the engineering team, running refinement meetings and writing & refining tickets can be too much for a PM along with their other responsibilities.?

These are some of the core roles that traditionally fall under Product but there are others that supplement the core team and have a heavier overlap with other teams in organisations….

More Roles in Product

Product Designer - Has more of a design focus (as the name suggests). Leans more towards designing journeys for customers, works with design to establish tone of voice and design principles for the product.

Product Marketing Manager - Has more of a Marketing focus. Understands the product and how it functions and helps establish ways to explain features to customers via marketing channels, developing any other tools or features that introduce more people to the product and managing SEO and other Product Marketing metrics.

Product Operations - Has more of an Operations focus (have you spotted the pattern yet). Product Ops will work across all teams involved in the product to help make the product lifecycle as efficient as possible. Whether that’s working with Marketing to identify a better way of letting them know when new features will be released in the app, helping facilitate research in a particular area of the app, help identify the best metric tracking tools or ensuring there’s a operational process to support a feature that’s about to go live.

Growth Product Manager - Similar to the Product Marketing Manager in some respects but more focussed on the growth of the product in terms impact, scale and revenue. They will often look at the key metrics around these 3 areas, set baselines & targets and come up with ideas, whether it’s a new feature or a campaign, to improve on these numbers over time.

Customer/Market Researcher - Has more of a research focus. A role that often, but not exclusively, sits within the Product function. This is a key role throughout development of the product especially in customer centric product development. This person will stay on top of the market trends, perform independent research on the market, shape a research strategy for the target customer segment and often go out and actually speak to customers directly.

Although it looks like I’ve just given magic definitions to all the roles within Product, the truth is a bit more complicated than that. Some people get misidentified as PMs when they are performing the role of a Head of Product and some will be labelled a Product Lead when they are in fact doing all the work of a CPO. Some of this is down to a lack of understanding when it comes to what the roles themselves are, which is something I hope I’ve helped clear up a little. But part of this misunderstanding is also down to Product roles being slightly different at Startups vs Mature organisations.

Startups

At smaller, early-stage startups a PM (or person in charge of the product) is responsible for many things and will therefore wear many hats. They’ll likely be responsible for the roadmap, market research, customer research, customer feedback, journey mapping, prototyping, story writing and much more. And as you would have seen from the roles I laid out earlier, this type of PM could also be considered CPO, Product Growth, Product Designer, PM, PO, Product Marketing which is why roles get a bit blurry here and people here will just be called a PM.?

If you’re a PM looking to gain real experience in a number of different roles within Product and get hands-on experience in many of the key activities across the Product spectrum, a startup is the place to be. But it’s a double edged sword as you’re expected to learn on the job and often won’t have the structure or mentorship to learn off others.??

Mature Organisations

Mature organisations (and when I say mature I mean in age and size) as you might have guessed are at the other end of the spectrum. There’s much more structure and much narrower and clearer roles & responsibilities. Someone in Product who is writing stories and interacting with the tech team is not going to be creating a roadmap and driving a strategic vision for the Product. Mainly because the responsibilities are likely to be segregating and the gap between the person gathering requirements and the person creating the strategic vision and roadmap for the organisation is likely to be much wider.?

For folks who are new to product, a mature organisation is a great place to start or hone foundational skill. Product people in these organisations will have clearly defined roles and will have mentors and managers to help up-skill them and find their ideal position within the product function. On the downside, due to the hierarchical nature of these organisations, gaining practical experience in the more senior end of product can be more difficult as it takes longer to rise through the ranks and get closer to the roles that involve strategy and overall product vision.

So what are the benefits of a good product management function?

You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” - Steve Jobs

Although I've gone through what Product is and the different types of roles within it some might still be unsure what the key benefits of a well oiled product function are to organisations. So here are some of them:

Increased likelihood of product success

It’s almost a no-brainer that having a dedicated team tasked with managing and improving the product will lead to a more successful product but it’s necessary to call this one out. You wouldn’t expect a business who was looking to promote themselves to do successfully without a dedicated and a well structured Marketing function. So of course organisations with products should have dedicated and well structured Product functions?

Keeping Product aligned with market needs

Product continuously researches market trends and changes in the problem space to ensure the product is up to date. Monitoring prevailing trends in the market and ensuring the product evolves to continuously solve real life problems is core to a successful proposition.?

Creating and supporting a customer centric business

An effective Product function will build processes for gathering customer feedback and making sure the customer’s voice is heard throughout the product. But as Steve Jobs says “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” Good product people will stay on the pulse of the wants and needs of customers and build ‘sticky’ features that customers don’t even know they need yet whilst also factoring in the previously mentioned market trends to future-proof the product.

Foundations for product and organisation scaling

A good Product function helps lay the foundation for a successful product launch and beyond. Creating a roadmap that fits with the market & customer base, ensuring a mix of features that includes revenue creation, retention & referral. But laying good product foundations for growth isn’t limited to creating a roadmap.

For startups, a great Product function will outline a strong metrics framework so that success can be benchmarked and progress can be highlighted to potential investors. They’ll help identify additional markets or geographies the product could enter based on Product/Market/Consumer fit. They’ll establish efficient cadence and method for communicating product strategy across the organisation and establish the right tools for prototyping, gathering feedback & collecting ideas.?

As an organisation evolves, the Product function will still drive the previously mentioned initiatives but they’ll also help pivot the product if needed or expand into a new territory or even help with adding a completely new Product to the organisation's arsenal. They’ll drive the initial ideation and discovery, help with prototyping, support the build and manage the launch laying the foundations for another successful product offering.

Summary

Product is a must have function for any digitally focussed organisation or startup looking to build a new digital product. But it’s not as simple as just having a ‘product person’ you can point to or taking a cookie cutter approach and making a token CPO hire. You have to know the type of person you want in this position and the focus will likely be different depending on the stage of the Product Lifecycle you’re in from Ideation to Scale. Maybe in the ideation stage you want more Research/Product Manager people and in Scale you’d want more Growth/Marketing PMs and look to have more structure in the team.

As the old saying goes, it’s horses for courses. And now you have a better idea of the different types of horses in Product and how they can be utilised more effectively.

If you have any questions or are curious to learn more then feel free to email me directly at [email protected]