Product Management as a Function

Key takeaways;

• Figuring Out Who Does What: In agile environments, folks in Product Management, like Product Owners and Managers, often scratch their heads over what exactly they're supposed to do, especially when their organization is just starting to embrace agile ways of working.
• Getting to Know Your Product Inside and Out: It's super important to really understand what your product is all about, the problem it's trying to solve, where it stands in its life, and how it fits into your customers' lives. This helps in nailing down what you need to do.
• Where You Work Changes the Game: The size of your company, the industry it's in, and what it's aiming to achieve can really shape what's expected from someone in Product Management.
• The Bigger Picture of Working Together: Depending on the framework your team uses to scale up (like SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, or Scrum@Scale), your role and how you work with others can look quite different.
• It's a Team Sport: Product Management isn't just about one thing; it's about blending strategy, development, and operations. It takes a village to get the right product to the right user at the right time.

In recent SAFe Product Owner / Product Manager training sessions I've conducted, I've observed a common trend: Professionals in Product Management, including Product Owners, Business Analysts, and Product Managers, often have inquiries about the intersections and divergences of their responsibilities with other roles.

Many of these professionals work in organizations undergoing agile transformations. Consequently, they find themselves struggling with the transition between old and new practices, leading to challenges in adapting to loosely defined responsibilities and navigating through the changes.

I also notice a similar situation among participants exploring career transitions. When you browse job postings for "Product Owner" or "Product Manager" on LinkedIn, you'll gain a clearer insight into what I'm referring to. Companies frequently look for a fusion of roles from both Product Management and Product Development within a single individual.

It is valuable to investigate a few additional subjects beyond the specified qualifications in the job listing to fully understand the expectations.

There's No One-Size-Fits-All Answer

Whether you're a Business Analyst, Product Owner, Chief Product Owner, or Product Manager, it's essential to focus on three key points to outline the tasks covered by your role:

1)?Begin by understanding the scope of the product

• What problem does the product solve? Whose problem does it solve? At which stage of the product lifecycle is the product?
• Is it a standalone Product / Development Value Stream or are there other Development Value Streams on the solution's Customer Journey?
• How many software development teams are there, and how many stakeholders from which domains are working together??

The stage of the product life cycle, whether it's in the introduction, growth, maturity, or decline phase, is vital for determining the tasks of the product management function and how to prioritize them.?

2) Examine the organization's structure

• How large is the company? How many employees does it have? Is it an internationally operating company?
• In which sectors does it provide services?
• What are the company's vision and goals?

The product management needs of a startup differ from those of a product developed in a large enterprise. Consequently, what the organization is expected of you will vary. Whether you have sufficient industry and domain knowledge will be crucial in assuming strategic or operational responsibilities. Product goals must align with the company's vision and objectives.?

3) Determine which Scaling Framework is being used (or how a blend is created)

• Which framework is used to elevate the lean and agile mindset from team level to enterprise level?
• Is a scaling framework implemented uniformly across the organization, or is it a customized blend of one or more frameworks tailored to the organization's needs?

SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, or Scrum@Scale. They all have structures that are both similar and distinct from one another. Understanding the tasks expected of you and your collaboration with other stakeholders will depend greatly on the structure chosen by the organization.

Embracing Shared Responsibilities in Product Management

In the training sessions I conduct, I often try to summarize the goal of Product Management as follows: "Deliver the right product, to the right user, at the right time."

The Scaled Agile Framework expands on this definition a bit further and lists the features of the right product: “Product Management is the function responsible for defining desirable, viable, feasible, and sustainable solutions that meet customer needs and supporting development across the product life cycle.”

Here's the point I want to draw your attention to: SAFe talks about Product Management as a function rather than a specific role. Why? Because these definitions encompass a broad area including strategy, product development, and operations.

Go-to Market planning, pricing strategy and revenue modeling, market analysis, customer feedback management, defining product strategy and vision, planning product roadmap, stakeholder management, defining and tracking success metrics, resource allocation, requirement analysis, defining acceptance criteria, feature definition, steering product development, acceptance tests, defining quality requirements (NFRs – Nonfunctional Requirements), supporting the development teams in delivering value, backlog management etc. This list can be expanded further.

A single individual cannot ensure that a product achieves the strategic goals listed above. This can only be achieved through a good team sharing all these responsibilities.

You can see a similar shared responsibility logic in other scaling frameworks as well. For example, in Nexus, there is a Nexus Integration Team with a Nexus Product Owner. Many responsibilities within the scope of Product Management are shared among Nexus Product Owner and Product Owners from individual teams on Nexus. In many organizations, we see multiple product managers and/or a chief product owner sharing these responsibilities with the support of team product owners.

Conclusion

In summary, providing a one-size-fits-all short answer when faced with a similar question from professionals in the field of Product Management is nearly impossible.

Consultants often begin their responses with “it depends...” ??

Your responsibilities as a Product Management professional often depend on the scope of the product, organizational structure, and scaling framework. However, the most significant hint will come from the organizational culture. In organizations where responsibilities are shared, identifying intersections and divergences between your responsibilities and those of other roles will be easier to resolve through internal communication within the team.

What do you think? Do you agree with my suggestion?

#scaledagileframework #productmanagement #sharedresponsibility

tecnovy Scaled Agile, Inc.