Product Management

Developing products is an important part of what Thinknostic is all about. We build commercial software products for our clients as well as develop our own product ideas. The product development process both energizes and invigorates us by encouraging us to use techniques we might not otherwise use and apply disciplines we might not otherwise have.

Creating a new product requires inspiration, innovation and a keen sense of what consumers want. This is where Product Management begins. The term “Product Management” seems to mean different things to different organizations. I like to think of the role as being the primary liaison between the software team, the marketing team and the business team. In many cases the Product Manager may have been recruited from or asked to also lead one or more of those teams and this might explain why the role has no universally accepted definition.

First and foremost the Product Manager is a representative for the products market for all important team decisions. It also involves acting as a liaison between the software team when dealing with customers and acting as a representative of both when dealing with the business and financial side of things.

The Product Managers accountability is to deliver the right product. That means they are trying to delivery maximum value to the customers. The Project Managers accountability is to deliver the product right. That means they will be striving for defect free code, delivered on time and to budget. These roles are co-dependent and their goals should be complementary however there are times when trade-offs need to be negotiated. For example incorporating new features late in the delivery cycle can jeopardize the availability date, destabilize the code or blow the budget. On the other hand not having the feature might mean losing an important customer or missing a new market segment. The most critical part of Product Management is figuring out who your customers are, and what they need.

How we fit Product Management into thinkWRAP

At Thinknostic we aim for commercial quality at prototype speed. This means short release cycles and quick rapid feedback. Neither ours nor our customers budgets are unlimited so our focus must always be on maximizing customer value and that means that our product managers need to be priority setters. They must be very effective at information gathering, synthesis and dissemination so that opportunities to improve consumer value can be quickly assessed, prioritized and communicated to the development team.

There are many aspects of thinkWRAP that make the Product Management discipline even more important. There is a need to get an up-front understanding of the products value as perceived by the consumer, and continually validate and refine that throughout the project. Priorities must be adjusted as our perception of reality evolves. A thinkWRAP project treats completion dates and budgets as fixed unless the business decides otherwise. That makes scope or features the major variable. Deciding which features provide the maximum value requires extensive customer input, experience and sound judgement throughout the project. That is the core responsibility of the Product Manager.