When I first started doing product management over a decade ago, things were different. Back then, we were at the head of waterfall methodologies and our mission was to lay out a grand strategy to help move the business forward. Up front, this often involved business analysis, market assessments, and staged roadmaps with many versions planned out ahead. We would be expected to write business plans along with detailed functional and market requirements documents. We’d partner with technical leaders to write technical specifications and get signoff from all our stakeholders. If we were progressive we would go out and talk with existing and potential clients and get their feedback. We’ve have our plans baked for 1-2-3 year cycles with a nice big hokey stick financial plan about how we were going to grow our business into $100 million dollar ventures with unlimited potential ahead of us. We’d have detailed milestones we could communicate to marketing and sales on when we would deliver what features and everyone in the company would charge forward to meet those commitments come hell or high water. Whole teams would rally around these plans, align their schedules to each other, and work to ensure we get somewhere.
Ah the good ol days when the product manager was the keeper of the great plan…
How times have changed
Today, product management (at least in my experience) is very different. Today we are expected to work in an agile SCRUM, Kanban, or some other rapid development methodology. At least that’s what people aspire to on paper. I have often found some mix of those and some waterfall things mixed in, depending on how ‘on board’ the design team or program manager or dev team is with the model. Also, it depends on if you are outsourcing, or have an offshore team, or some mixture of all of it–which seems to be common these days in larger organizations.
Products have changed
Of course, one of the biggest changes that unlocks all kinds of potential is the rise of SaaS tools. In the past, shipping boxed software meant that planning in those 3 year cycles made more sense. But in today’s world of near continuous deployment of online solutions across web sites and apps, we have a lot more flexibility.
Changes in software development
In addition, making software itself isn’t what it used to be. Today, developers have mature development frameworks, front end frameworks, test frameworks, pre-configured virtual servers, cloud resources, and more to get their products launched smoothly and efficiently. In addition, more powerful than anything else, developers today have Google. They no longer have to be stuck for days when they hit brick walls. One Google search for a error message, one posted question on Stack Overflow, or one quick browsing of online documentation can help them move forward. The mythical man month and the cost of rework has been reduced by these tools exponentially. The old models where one bug cost you 10x at the end then the beginning is being replaced with a new model of continuous deployments and refactoring that helps optimize on the fly.
Changes in market development
Add to that new tools for marketers to put out new ideas, test new concepts, validate assumptions, and turn research into continuous market refinement, and you have the recipe for a whole new approach to validating, building, and marketing products.When in the past we tried to build a ‘case’ for a new market opportunity by analyzing every single factor to death, today we focus more on testing hypotheses and validating assumptions.
Adapt or be left behind
So to adapt and continue to add value, we product managers have had to change the way we operate. The fact is, it is not that hard to add value in this new wave. We have help from gurus like Eric Ries and Steve Blank and the whole lean startups and customer development movements. We have smart marketing folks teaching us about growth hacking.
Check out this famous deck on growth hacking if you want to learn more.
So as you think about where to focus your energies to make yourself useful in this brave new world, here are some of my suggestions.
Old skills
- Financial modeling for long-term planning
- Market analysis and assessments
- Business case building
- Functional spec writing
- Version defined roadmaps and focus on delivery dates
New skills
- SQL queries and Pivot Tables for real-time analysis
- Signal testing
- Hypothesis-driven planning
- MVP and rapid prototyping
- Iterative roadmaps and focus on moving KPIs
I’m sure there are many more points to consider on this topic. But this blog post is already too long. The fact is, this brave new world of product management is exciting and full of potential. There are tremendous opportunities to make a difference like never before in organizations. But I think it requires a slightly different skillset and a slightly augmented approach for product managers to be successful. Best of luck to you as you figure out your own path forward.
