Product management in reality is far from the glamorous job descriptions filled with buzzwords like vision, strategy, and innovation.
In this article, we break down what product management in reality truly looks like and what it takes to thrive in this role.
“Product manager is the CEO of the product”
“Product Management is about dictating the features to the engineering teams”
You might’ve heard this several times. And, these lines made Product Manager look like a fancy job title in the market.
Product management in the real world can differ significantly from what is written in books or taught in theoretical sessions. While books and academic resources provide valuable frameworks and models, the practical aspects of product management often involve a lot of complexities, nuances, and variations that may not be fully captured in books.
In this post, I aim to make you understand what Product Management is from a real-world lens.
I’m not going to lie, Product management does play a critical role in the development and lifecycle management of a product in the real world, whether it’s a physical item, software, service, or a combination of these.
But, this is not a one-man’s job. It involves a lot of cross-team collaboration and navigation through a lot of hurdles.
Below are some key aspects to note that capture the difference between real-world product management and its theoretical depiction.
Ambiguity and Uncertainty
In the real world, product managers frequently encounter ambiguity and uncertainty. This could be due to changing market conditions, users’ preferences shift, and unexpected external challenges. This requires adaptability and the ability to make decisions with imperfect information or less data at hand.
During COVID-19, many consumer apps had to pivot their business model to adapt to changing user needs. For example, Spotify’s income heavily relied on advertising revenue before COVID-19, but it was forced to change strategy since many companies had to cut their advertising budgets due to the pandemic. Spotify then decided to offer original content, in the form of podcasts. More than 150,000 podcasts were uploaded on the platform and Spotify even signed deals with celebrities.
This demonstrates the need to adapt to changing circumstances and make decisions even when faced with uncertainty.
Cross-functional Collaboration
Collaboration with cross-functional teams, such as engineering, design, marketing, and sales, is a central part of product management. Real-world product managers must navigate diverse personalities, priorities, and even perspectives to achieve product success. This is not taught in any framework, experience is the best teacher in this case.
For example, you’re developing a new feature for a messenger app. The design team wants an aesthetically pleasing and UX principles-aligned layout, the engineering team needs to ensure scalability, and on the other hand, the marketing team needs to create promotional materials. On top of it, the company leadership wants to ship another feature on priority.
Striking a balance between different perspectives and aligning their efforts could be challenging. But, hey, at the end of the day, that’s what real-world product management looks like!
Resource Constraints
In practice, product management often involves dealing with resource constraints, including budget limitations and resource shortages. Prioritization and resource allocation can be challenging, and sometimes negotiation skills come into play to address these constraints effectively.
An example could be, your company faces budget constraints, and you need to prioritize features for your product launch. While your vision may include a wide range of features, you must make tough decisions about which ones to include within the available resources. This may involve deferring some features to future releases. You would even need to convince the leadership for these roadmap changes. Remember, a deferred feature sometimes means a dead feature. It may not be picked up in the next roadmap.
User Feedback and Data Analysis
This is one of the highly underrated aspects of Product Management which is often not covered in all books. The real world involves the complexities of collecting, synthesizing, and prioritizing this feedback effectively. It’s not always a straightforward process.
For example, users provide feedback on your e-commerce website, complaining about the complex checkout process. The checkout process involves all steps right from the user browsing the item, adding the item to the cart, and finally actually making the payment. Analyzing the issue in detail takes you to the root cause. This involves not only analyzing the feedback or comments but also digging into the data and finding patterns or anomalies. Post analysis of the data for each step during the user journey, you found that users are dropping off while entering their addresses. You must then prioritize redesigning the checkout process based on these insights.
Cultural and Geographic Differences
If a product has a global user base, product managers need to consider cultural and geographic differences as well. This includes localization, compliance with regional regulations, and understanding the nuances of diverse user bases. Not adhering to the regulations may even lead to a permanent ban on product usage in that country/region.
For example, your social networking platform is expanding globally. You must consider local language preferences, cultural norms, and regional regulations. You might need to enable content localization, adapt to different social etiquette, and comply with data privacy laws like GDPR in Europe.
Continuous Learning and Adaptation
Practical Product Management involves continually adapting strategies and approaches based on evolving market dynamics, technology trends, and customer needs. This commitment to learning and adaptation is crucial which may not be explicitly emphasized in theory.
An example could be, you’re managing a fitness app, and new fitness trends emerge. Users are showing interest in new types of workouts. To remain relevant in the business, you need to continuously research and adapt your app to accommodate these trends, even if they weren’t part of your initial product vision. This also results in a change in the product roadmap and ramping up the team to adapt to the latest changes.
Additionally, Product Management in the real world may involve dealing with 2 other nuances. Note that these are highly dependent on the maturity of the product and how a company/team is structured.
Organizational Politics
Real-world product managers must navigate organizational politics, hierarchies, and differing agendas. This may involve advocating for their product, securing buy-in from senior leadership, and negotiating for necessary resources.
Legacy Systems and Technical Debt
Dealing with legacy systems and technical debt is a common real-world challenge. This may involve making difficult decisions about whether to refactor or rewrite code, which can have a significant impact on the product’s development timeline and resources.
In summary, while books provide a valuable foundation for understanding product management principles and frameworks, the real-world practice of product management and product thinking involves navigating a dynamic, ever-changing landscape filled with practical challenges and complexities.
I hope that this article gives you insights into what product management in reality looks like. Share your thoughts on which aspects you feel are hard to navigate being a PM.
That’s all for today. See you again!
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