Where does Product Management belong in EdTech organisations?

As EdTech companies grow and the nature of technology evolves into the world of SaaS and apps, there’s often confusion around where Product Management should sit in the organisation.

Traditional consumer organisations have had a tendency to consider Product Management in the same arena as Marketing. However, the danger here is when Marketing is actually ‘Marketing Communications’ (sadly often the case in EdTech) - it means that no-one is involved in defining and delivering the products.

In a lot of Tech companies, the Product Management function tends to be viewed in the technical arena, lumped in with the Development directorate. The problem here is that the Product Managers can get tied up in functionality and requirements and spend so much time building products they’re don’t really have the skills to deliver them – it means no-one is engaging the customers to understand their problems.

To drive the maximum success from a Product Management team, you need to understand exactly what their role is. 

A successful Product Management directorate looks at the needs of the entire business and the entire market. It’s broadly comprised of three main areas:

·        Product strategy

·        Product marketing

·        Technical product management

The Product Management Director will focus the product management team on the business of the product.  The team will engage and communicate with existing and potential customers, articulate and quantify market problems, create business cases and market requirements documents, define standard procedures for product delivery and launch, support the creation of collateral and sales enablement tools, and trains the sales teams on the product. 

Within the EdTech market the truth is: if you want better products in the future, and for the product management team to be held accountable at organisational level, then it must be represented at Board level in its own right.