From Coder to Product Mastermind: Unveiling the Secrets of Product Management
By Anita Ramachandran and Pravin Yashwant Pawar
The modern software landscape has been evolving rapidly, moving from the conventional and layered web applications hosted on-premise/remote servers’ model to a mobile-only/mobile-first, cloud-native, or applications with diverse deployment options model.
While software engineering practice in the industry had matured well over the second half of the twentieth century, the first two decades and the current one so far of this millennium have witnessed disruptive growth of the field — thanks largely to the evolution of new problem domains (e.g. intelligent applications and data management) as well as diverse deployment patterns (e.g. cloud, mobile, and embedded devices). More subtle and impactful for practitioners is the change in perspective and approach — from a project-driven lifecycle to a product-driven software lifecycle.
Emphasis on delivering more value to customers is driving major shift in paradigm
Software organisations’ adaption of project-centric thinking did succeed in the early days of software development, complementing the popular waterfall methodology — a sequential development process that flows like a waterfall through all phases of a project (for example, analysis, design, development, and then testing), with each phase completely wrapping up before the next phase begins, being commonly used for large projects.
As the attention towards customers’ needs and expectations intensifies, development teams are embracing a product-oriented mindset that prioritises the creation of more value over merely achieving milestones. This shift requires teams to dedicate their efforts towards delivering tangible value to customers, emphasising the overall impact and usefulness of the software product rather than solely focusing on reaching predefined project milestones.
What is product management and why is it critical for future success?
Product management is a multidisciplinary approach to business and technology management that centres on creating and delivering products to meet or surpass business goals and objectives. It is a business process and discipline that supervises a product’s entire lifecycle, from its inception to its market launch or customer delivery and support, in an effort to maximise revenue.
Consequently, product management serves as a vital business function within software companies, enabling them to achieve desired objectives. Moreover, hardware and physical product companies may require product management for their software products, given the involvement of digital systems and software in the delivery process. Software Product Management (SPM) is a developing field that concentrates on comprehending the optimal methods to synchronise and monetize software products in accordance with a company’s overarching strategy.
A strong and capable product management team is the backbone of any successful product. This team carries out several key responsibilities, which include defining the product’s features, mapping out its roadmap, monitoring the product’s progress and resolving customer issues. It consists of a carefully selected group of cross-functional team members who play a vital role in determining what should be built and how it should be built. Organising the team with well-defined roles and clear ownership is crucial for achieving the desired outcomes.
Classification of product management team and various related roles
The product management team can be classified into four key areas: Product management, product marketing, user experience (UX) design, and product analytics. Product management professionals are responsible for overseeing the entire life cycle of the product and act as the primary point of contact for addressing the needs of stakeholders and customers.
Data and AI product manager roles are rising as many organisations have started tapping into opportunities resulting from the availability of big data, which requires technical depth in data engineering, machine learning, and cognitive services.
Product marketing team members play a vital role in bringing the product to market by creating demand through determining product positioning, developing messaging, and devising launch strategies that effectively communicate the product’s benefits to end-users. Sometimes they are called growth managers, as they are responsible for scaling customer success primarily in the B2C segment.
UX designers concentrate on enhancing customer interactions and experiences with the product by utilising their expertise in software and design. This encompasses various aspects, including UX design, information hierarchy, user research, and usability. Evolution in user interfaces, primarily in conversational experiences (voice, text etc.), is bringing in a new dimension in the field of UX design.
Finally, product analytics encompasses observing customer behaviour and engagement data to enhance the customer journey through the techniques, such as monitoring, visualisation, and assessment of user engagement data, which contribute to improving the product’s performance. This assists in extracting many interesting and even hidden insights from the customer’s deep involvement with the product.
And then there are strategic SPM, technical SPM and more evolving roles as well!
Frequently, the duties of product management are divided or structured in different ways, including distinctions, such as inbound versus outbound, business versus technical, and strategic versus tactical. Within software organisations, the role of a product manager can exhibit variations depending on their specific areas of focus, which may include business, product, or marketing.
A product marketing manager primarily handles post-production activities, such as product launches and promotional campaigns. Conversely, a strategic SPM assumes the role of a business leader, akin to a “mini-CEO,” and provides strategic direction for a range of products. A technical SPM, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with defining the product’s contents, with less emphasis on business and marketing aspects. It is worth noting that organisations may employ alternative titles for the software manager role, such as programme manager, solution manager, offering manager, or brand manager.
Product management now has a distinct career path globally and across industries too!
Product management has a high-growth trajectory in the software industry. Over the past decade, many software product companies, such as Microsoft, IBM, and Google, have adopted SPM. Additionally, numerous corporate information technology organisations across various industries and those that produce software, embedded in software-intensive products and services, have also embraced the practice of SPM.
Due to the mix of perspectives and knowledge required for various kinds of roles and a dearth of availability of specific training to address such roles, there has been a significant gap between the supply of talent and the demand by organisations. LinkedIn job listing reveals openings for product managers (and for senior positions in the track, such as group product managers and product directors) are increasing in the Indian software industry as well.
How can working professionals upskill themselves in product management?
Anticipating that several changes (including the ones that were considered above) will impact the growth and evolution of the Indian software industry, we at BITS Pilani Work Integrated Learning programmes (WILP) division took up the initiative of redesigning the curriculum of our M.Tech. Software Engineering programme. During our endeavours to introduce or emphasise some aspects of modern software enterprises, focusing on a product-driven approach, we also observed a bi-modal distribution of learners: early-career software engineers (with less than three years of software development and process experience) and mid-to-mature career engineers/engineering managers (with at least five to eight years of experience, including in project-lead/team-lead, architect, and project-management positions).