The Main Stages of the Product Management Process
By Zoe Aerin
Zoe Aerin is a product manager, specializing in growth. According to Zoe, It doesn’t necessarily follow that a brilliant idea will result in a wonderful product. Not all ideas are excellent right off the bat. Keeping these axioms in mind, product management is crucial in bringing chaos under control and ultimately bringing products to market.
There isn’t a single playbook that applies to all product management procedures. However, the fundamental structure of most organizations is very comparable. It’s a drawn-out process involving input from many departments and involvement from many stakeholders. However, the product management procedure guides the process.
The primary steps in the product management process will be described in this article. Additionally, while names and other characteristics may differ from one workplace to the next, almost every product travels along a similar path.
Idea Management : New idea generation is not extremely challenging. Anyone can experience inspiration at any time. Additionally, there are several methods for finding them, like as brainstorming sessions, client interviews, and monitoring your rivals.
Product management must sort through the ideas to determine which ones advance to the front of the line because it is impossible to implement them all. Product management is responsible for organizing and managing idea generation.
Specifications : Once an idea has been written down and categorized, it’s time to work out some of the specifics. Several objectives will be met, and these will be important later on in the product management process.
Specifications for products should be succinct, not excessively technical papers that address three key issues:
Why are we building what we are?
What should this new item accomplish?
How do we evaluate our progress?
Teams should work together to find the answers to these questions with input from a variety of stakeholders in order to take into account all possible scenarios and guarantee that everyone is on the same page moving ahead. When you prioritize and put things into action later, it will be obvious what is being considered because you have eliminated as many uncertainties as you can.
Roadmapping : You might be surprised to learn that prioritization comes later in the product management process than road mapping. When you haven’t yet prioritized them, how can you decide which additions and improvements to add?
Product management can redirect the discourse away from feature X versus feature Y arguments and toward higher-level goals, objectives, and themes that further the product vision by creating a roadmap prior to the prioritization stage. This disrupts the loop of emphasizing individual improvements and places an emphasis on significant outcomes that have an impact on North Star measures, KPIs, and strategic goals.
Prioritizatio : It’s now time to choose which of those backlog items deserves to be removed and moves past the idea stage. Here, one of the various prioritizing frameworks on the market can be useful.
Delivery : Now that there is a roadmap and a list of priorities, it is time to begin developing and delivering. Here is where product management frequently takes a backseat, acting more as an advisor or consultant while engineers and project managers take the helm.
The manner in which products are supplied can differ significantly amongst organizations. The waterfall model is one extreme, with meticulously scheduled project schedules, infrequent releases, and only shipping once large portions of functionality have been finished and tested.
Analytics and experiments : Product analytics provide a new chance for learning once the product is put into the open (or even as a limited beta), thanks to the deluge of user data available when products are properly instrumented to gather it.
At this point, product management can take a few significant actions. They can first see which behaviors influence the important KPIs that the firm values. For instance, if conversion is crucial, they can examine what the majority of users do before making a purchase.
Product teams can do tests thanks to product analytics. Teams can evaluate the effectiveness of various scenarios by testing them on various user groups. The roadmap is then modified based on the findings to improve the present user experience. A culture of trials and continual learning may take hold and improve the product if the appropriate data is accessible for analysis and there is a team to make it all happen.