What are the challenges of managing multiple products simultaneously?

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Overseeing an organization's product portfolio can come with a host of challenges. From prioritizing competing demands to properly allocating resources, product managers need to plan with care to ensure that all of the products they oversee are able to flourish. Here are some of the roadblocks product managers may face when managing multiple products.?

1. Resource allocation: When there aren’t enough resources to go around, product managers may need to prioritize certain products over others. For example, a company may produce two types of software — one that is widely used and drives the majority of revenue and another that is still in the early stages of development. Managers will need to balance the demands of both products, which may mean allocating more resources to the more profitable one in order to maintain its growth, even though the newer product may have just as much potential in the long run.

"Managing multiple products requires a balanced approach to prioritization. If you are looking at your product backlog or fielding stakeholder inputs, step back and ask how each task will impact broader goals like user satisfaction, new client acquisition, revenue, and retention. If the task isn't moving the needle on your broader, more critical goals, then it's ok to make it secondary. Something will always have to give. Making sure that it's not a key task makes it ok."

— Julius Girón is a strategy consultant at software company NetBase Quid. He holds over 15 years of experience in business development, program management and entrepreneurship. He earned his Global Executive Master's of Business Administration from IE Business School.

"In a startup environment, the demands of your largest clients can often put a strain on the 'well laid plans' you have for your product roadmaps. It's critical for senior leadership to be able to provide product managers with context for why priorities may need to shift and also with protection against the whiplash experience that can be inadvertently a morale-crusher to product teams, especially those managing multiple products.?

— Romy Parzick is the former CEO of financial services company Vault.co. She holds over 15 years of experience as an executive leader in tech and earned her MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

2. Maintaining focus: When managing multiple products, there are numerous discussions to be had and decisions to be made, all of which can pull a manager's attention away from the strategic aspects of product development. This can be especially true for product managers who are juggling responsibilities for widely different types of products. For instance, a product manager for a pharmaceutical company might be simultaneously overseeing a new drug therapy as well as an over-the-counter pain medication. Both of these products will have completely different development processes and strategies, which can be tough for a manager to navigate at the same time.

"The best advice I got from an SVP when I joined Google is to focus on one or two things every quarter. The biggest opportunity for PMs is to understand what these two things are - what I call the most critical feature, and then to be razor focussed on launching and landing that feature before trying to do the next. In this way the product keeps moving forward meeting the demands of the customer while ensuring focus on both innovation and scale."

— Shalini Govil-Pai ?has been a vice president and general manager at Google for over five years. She holds over 15 years of product management experience and earned her Master's in computer science from Penn State University.

3. Developing tunnel vision: Tunnel vision can often occur when a manager becomes too focused on a particular product and starts to ignore other priorities. For example, a product manager might be so passionate about developing a new cutting-edge app that they overlook the importance of continuing to tweak and update existing products. This can be detrimental to the organization as a whole, as it means that other products could fall behind the competition and suffer as a result.

"The biggest challenge of managing multiple products simultaneously is the mental switching that needs to happen - each product (most likely) has different business objectives, metrics, teams, etc. and may be in different stages of development. It takes a lot to realign your thoughts and refocus on different products so your your leadership as the PM is most helpful."

— Stephen Stesney is a product lead at consulting firm Predictive UX. He holds over 7 years of experience managing products and earned his MBA from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

Explore more

• Personal Productivity for Product Managers : A LinkedIn Learning course by Shyvee Shi
• How to Manage Multiple Projects: 5 Ways to Master Multiple Product Initiatives by Lawrence Tsai for Product Gym
• The PM's Guide To Getting Stuff Done: Tackle Your To-Do List in 3 Easy Steps by Heather McCloskey for UserVoice

This article was edited by LinkedIn News Editor Felicia Hou and was curated leveraging the help of AI technology.