Things to know about product management
Product managers have a lot of responsibilities, but the following points are the most prominent duties they oversee:
- Defining the problem
Every product should solve a problem, so the first step in product management is determining the pain points that your product will address. Product managers often conduct research by analyzing user feedback and personas, understanding the gaps in the industry market and what competitors are doing, looking at possible hang-ups with current tools or products, or collaborating with stakeholders and product teams. - Quantifying the opportunity
Next, managers need to set goals that not only align with their business objectives but that also make the “next steps” concrete and actionable. This takes a significant amount of high-level strategizing to create a realistic timeline that justifies the investment in product development. - Researching potential solutions
Once the need is defined and goals are established, it’s time to test and define a solution. Managers aren’t expected to do this alone; discovering the right solution takes creativity and effort from the whole team. As product managers get closer to the best solution, they’ll conduct user research and gather feedback on working models to truly test the solution. This will develop into a solid product vision with measurable metrics for tracking success. - Buildinging an MVP
Developing a useful product doesn’t happen on the first try; managers need to create a minimum viable product (MVP), a simplified version of the target product that has the basic features of your envisioned product. This should be released on the market to test the functionality and reception of the product. An MVP helps you anticipate potential problems, understand your messaging strategy, and tweak the product before it goes into mass production. - Creating a feedback loop
Collect feedback from the market and use data analysis to perfect your product. This step helps the team better understand how the customer thinks and feels so they can adjust their approach according to feedback. - Setting the strategy
As feedback is finalized, it is time to solidify the strategy and timeline of product development, construction, marketing, etc. A strategy should integrate the detailed research you’ve conducted, empathy for the customer, and storytelling to make the product a success. - Driving execution
As the product strategy is put into place, guiding the execution of the product launch is truly where the product manager shines. They lead the development and engineering teams to bring the product vision to life and set priorities to ensure everything runs smoothly and on time.
Strategic Portfolio Management: The thing you’ve been missing
As you can see, product management covers a lot of ground, but there are four main categories that can be used to break everything down:
- Customer-focused product management
This aspect of product management emphasizes the customer experience and how the product best serves the customer. Storytelling, marketing, customer support, and sales will be especially important for managers in this area. - Business-focused product management
With a focus on business, a product manager will also likely have a background in sales and understand the funding, development, and improvement stages and their impact on your business. They should know the market in and out, understand competitors, and should specialize in product positioning in their specific industry. - Engineering/technology-focused product management
This side of product management is in the weeds with the product, how it’s developed, and how it runs. A manager that focuses on these aspects will be more familiar with IT or software engineering so that they better understand what it does for the customers. - Design-focused product management
These managers focus on the internal efforts of product management by understanding the product's design and the consumer's user experience. How easy it is to use, the interface, and the functionality are the main priorities of this type of product management.
Pricing for ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management
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Product management with ServiceNow
Product management is no small feat, and in today’s competitive and technology-driven environment, managers need software that can keep up with their teams and deadlines. To ensure that the people and the many moving parts of your overall product management strategy are aligned with your business goals, it is more important than ever to use a strategic portfolio management (SPM) system.
SPM is all about making your business outcomes more achievable by focusing on making the vision of your product strategy both manageable and realistic. With tools that help you build clear and adaptive plans, understand your target market and objectives, and streamline decision-making, you can make the most of your budget and the most of your team’s efforts to deliver valuable results.
Learn more about ServiceNow’s strategic portfolio management solution, and gain the tools you need to visualize your objectives, align investments, and ultimately drive business outcomes more effectively.