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Many companies that hire early, make the mistake of hiring a less experienced person - a “hands on” individual contributor - to be “the Product Manager” for the fledgling product. In short, Product Management needs a seat at the management table. Why? Because she/he can not only help with overall product strategy and market alignment, but can set the stage for building a great team as the company expands. If there are no executives with a strong Product Management background in a startup, then an experienced Product Management executive should be the first formal Product Management hire that startup makes. Product Management must be part of the Executive team Put skilled Product Management in place early to accelerate market adoption, revenue and profits.

It is something a lot of companies seem to forget, as they release complex or unfocused products that require significant marketing and sales efforts to generate customer adoption. Or as Bill Campbell, former CEO of Intuit said “Great companies start with great products”. These are just some of the fundamental questions that should be asked and answered in the earliest stages of a business, as they not only impact how a product is built, but also the activities and people needed to bring the product successfully to market.įor any startup, company success is tied directly to product success.

What channels or partnerships are required to enter the market?.

How should the product be initially delivered into the market?.

How should the product be priced and licensed?.

Do the skillsets of those users match with the required skillsets needed to use the product?.

What skillsets will the target users have?.

What obstacles need to be overcome for people to adopt this product?.

How might competitors react once the product is launched?.

What are the current alternatives to using the product?.

is the pain a high enough priority for the buyer to spend money to address it?)

Will the buyers pay to address the user pain (i.e.

Who will be the main buyers of the product? (Note: buyers and users are not necessarily the same).

How much pain do these problems pose for these people?.

What high value problems does the product solve?.

Even in very early stage companies, there are many other questions that Product Management must answer: But it is only a small part of what Product Management must do. Understanding what should be built and for whom is a core task of Product Management. Put formal PM in place very early in a company’s life

And if you look back at the how Product Management got its start at Procter and Gamble almost 80 years ago, the focus was clearly on maximizing the business opportunity and focusing on product success.

Either way, the focus is on the business success.

To deliver measurable business results through product solutions that meet both market needs and company goals.

To optimize the business at the product, product line or product portfolio level over the lifecycle of the products.Īnother definition (courtesy of Don Vendetti of Product Arts) could be:

What is the ultimate goal of Product Management? I view it as the following: But all of these sell short the value and impact Product Management can have on a business. Too often technology Product Management is viewed as the requirements collector, or keeper of the product roadmap, or an adjunct to Engineering.

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Understand the full value of Product Management Here are the 5 steps to building a great organization.

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And perhaps it is because these teams are small, that not much thought is given to how to best structure them.īut given the critical cross-functional role Product Management plays, having a well structured, scalable and properly staffed team is absolutely critical, and can make a huge impact on the top-line of a company’s balance sheet. A reality of Product Management teams is that they are usually relatively small, particularly when compared to larger departments such as Engineering, Marketing or Sales.