The value of product management

PMs are the only ones responsible to show the value of our work. No one else.

Not long ago, someone approached me and openly said something that put things in a different perspective. After almost a year of working together, they still did not know what product management was because it was something too new.

But before doing anything, I had to understand how this happened.

How would they know if they never perceived strong product management, if they worked all their life in “old ways”, perceiving the role of product managers as someone responsible for delivering what others say, collecting requirements across the organisation?

Most importantly, how would they react if they suddenly found themselves in an environment with many different ways of working unknown to date, different processes where other people drive business impact and wanted to test assumptions before committing to develop features? I would feel lost.

Right there, I knew I’d failed to articulate the value of product management. I had work to do.

What is the Value of Product Management?

We have spent years and years trying to find ourselves, defining who we are, what we do, and what excellent product management should look like. Yet, we forget that the people around us, the ones who work the closest with us, might have a very different perspective.

They do perceive the world and work differently.

We have written hundreds of articles and books like “Product Management is hard, this is how you can make it lighter.” Those who have perceived good product management continuously share what it looks like. We have seen a genuinely positive development into what we, PMs, know today as product management.

On the other side are PMs, who often feel a deep sense of desperation working in environments where product management is not where we want it to be. Or where it is praised, it should be.

The truth is the less we show the value of product management, the less autonomous and empowered we will be.

Before going any further, what is the perception of product management’s value from those around us?

An honest self-look

A couple of days ago, Andrew Skotzko called the product management community to grow up in an article that resonated profoundly with many.

Even when Andrew’s article described clearly where we are as a profession and what we should start doing more effectively, there were questions I couldn’t answer.

• Why do we PMs fail to demonstrate our value?
• Do we think that this is clear all the time?
• Why we do assume everyone thinks what is the value of our work?

Product management is significantly influenced by the context it is. In the last years, we have seen product management flourish in new ways of solving problems and mitigating the risks associated with new ideas. We have invested a lot of effort into refining how we do things. We have tried them out. Yet, other people in many companies keep driving business impact.

Why is this?

In short, we are not doing enough to show how our work moves the needle.

The context, the sum of contexts where each of us product managers thrive, is changing. It hasn’t stopped changing, ever, yet we see threats popping up everywhere and things not being as we wish; we keep repeating to ourselves that product management is challenging and keep struggling with why people do not get it.

While feeling sorry for ourselves, we lose time in not showing what product management is about. In the meantime, the people around us stick to the guns they know shoot well.

Either Sales, Finance, Marketing, or Customer Support was there when we decided to be more empowered or that continuous discovery would help us solve our problems better.

A similar situation happened when we all decided to be agile (sigh), and other parts of the tech organisation freaked out about this way of doing things.

Deciding by ourselves how to improve how we solve problems without clearly demonstrating how it will be for the better creates resistance. It is one of the reasons why many organisations are still doing waterfall and white-collar-blue-collar ways of working, where the value is heavily driven by other people but product managers.

They know a way of driving results, which somehow works, and they know it has worked. Many people still do not know what a strong product management and culture is like. And they are also fine without knowing it. We must demonstrate more effective ways of solving problems for the customer and the business.

How do we get there?

Focus primarily on value. If we want our work to be understood, we should stop whatever we are doing and focus on demonstrating what the value of our work is.

Make an honest assessment of how each of your initiatives bring the business forward.

For too long, we have assumed that our stakeholders, off the box, understand how great product management can influence the product and the whole organisation.

All this time, management teams and stakeholders (remember, they do not want us to fail) just wanted results. And they have the right to claim it. How we tried to do it does not matter and never really did.

We need to bring results. So we will be able to drive it.

Let’s get to it:

• Ensure the initiatives you are working on represent the value they are supposed to bring, not only to the customer but the impact on the business (revenue, acquisition, cost reductions, market share, etc.)
• Ensure these initiatives fit within the company strategy, and that the product strategy contributes to the business.
• Align the value of your work with stakeholders and management expectations so you create clarity about what initiatives are driving what impact.
• Ensure there is a clear argument behind why something will not be done. As important as what your focus should be is what you will not do.