Clarity in Product Management: Teams, Discovery, Vision
Introduction
The principles of product management are universal and well established.
Yet, many contemporary discussions related to product management are premised upon some form of unsupported statements and the relabeling of pre-existing concepts.
A clear understanding of product management, using principles, not mere beliefs, is key to professional advancement.
This review deconstructs common re-branded terms and ideas in the world of product.
The Elusive “Product Team”
The product team is a term that often appears in blog posts and even books. But there is no such thing as a product team.
In a company’s organizational structure, the top container is the Product Group, which is regarded as a business unit.
The product group represents the problem space.
The product group holds different Departments — in PMTK, it comprises the Product Planning and the Product Marketing departments.
Members of the same or different departments form teams for different purposes, e.g., Product Management Team and Product Definition Team.
The Engineering Group, the product group’s main counterpart, comprises the Development, Quality Assurance, and User Experience departments.
Members of the departments in the engineering group form different types of Product Development Teams.
The engineering group represents the solution space.
Team members can span different groups and departments. For example, a Product Definition Team member can belong to a department in the Product Group or the Engineering Group.
The term Product team might be easy to remember, but it is fundamentally incomplete and unclear.
Numerous Product Team Labels
Anyone in a product leadership position nowadays has to be utterly confused about which team type to use in their organization.
There are seemingly so many teams to choose from. They grow by the day.
“Feature team, component team, cross-component team, delivery team, product team, empowered team, dynamic team, agile team, scrum team, sprint team, functional team, cross-functional team, etc.”
There is conflicting information on whether the roles in any of these teams are from different departments working together as a team or if the team members all belong to one department. There is no guidance on who the roles report to, and who manages that team.
It seems most of these teams are based on the idea of mixing everybody under the same roof. There is no separation between roles in product development and product management.
A close inspection of all these so-called team concepts suggests that they are actually rearrangements, combinations, renaming, or descriptive relabeling of the standard product management, product definition, and product development teams.
According to PMTK, there is a Product Management Team (defining and owning the market problem) and a Product Definition Team (defining and owning the solution).
The Engineering Group holds different Product Development Teams (building the solution).
There is full cooperation and communication between all three team types, who work together and jointly follow a logical product delivery process.
Perhaps the reinventing and relabeling of team ideas is done for marketing purposes. Maybe to project a sense of something new and improved.
“Product Team” Charter
The elusive Product team is supposed to manage the business, feasibility, and technical risks. It also manages value and viability.
Anyone who wrote a business case is familiar with those risks and knows they are identified before the product delivery process.
Then these risks are managed by different members of both the product management team and product development team.
How does the so-called Product team achieve value and viability? What are the process and tasks? How can one measure the type/level of value and viability achieved? Which criteria to use?
No answer there.
Without a definitive theory and practical guidance, the idea of an invented Product team managing types of risks becomes a simple slogan like “Build the right product and build it right”.
Delivery and Discovery Misnomer
The meaning of product delivery was always about bringing a product to market.
However, an argument was made that “Product Development is comprised of two tracks: Product Discovery (build the right product) and Product Delivery (build the product right).”
Product delivery describes how a company goes through several internal stages, resulting in a product being offered to customers.
In PMTK, the Product Delivery process is comprised of three stages:
- Product Planning — describe the market problem.
- Product Definition — describe the solution and how to build it.
- Product Development — build the solution.
So what exactly was done to come up with the two-track product development idea of Product Development = Product Discovery + Product Delivery ?
It seems for whatever purpose; the following was done:
- Product Delivery was renamed to product development.
- Product Planning was completely ignored or taken for granted.
- Product Definition was renamed to product discovery.
- Product Development was renamed to product delivery.
The conclusion is that the cosmetic rearrangement and renaming of elements of the standard product delivery process were done to come up with the two-track product development idea.
Product Vision and Mission
The concept of a product vision and mission is dated, but there is renewed interest in it.
The idea of a product vision, in particular, seems to be related to the Scrum software development method, although it is absent from the Scrum Guide.
There were numerous competing attempts to define what a product vision and product mission are. They range from simple statements to rather elaborate descriptions.
These definitions sometimes model themselves after existing techniques, such as a product roadmap or a product positioning statement.
The notion of a product vision is borrowed from the Corporate Mission and Corporate Vision concepts, extensively used in business management, that describes the general business direction and company purpose.
Alas, it is not possible to leverage the idea of a corporate mission and vision to a product vision and mission because the corporate mission and vision statements deal with the impact and actions of a company.
Product Management Subtypes
Are there different subtypes of product management?
A Google search will yield a long list of supposedly different variations of product management. The search results will include:
“Digital product management, B2B product management, B2C product management, technical product management, software product management, lean product management, UX product management, Agile product management, etc.”
However, there are no such things. There are no subtypes in product management. There is only product management.
These phrases relate to a specific type of product or market, not a type of product management.
Product management as a discipline is applied similarly to any goods and services in any industry and market.
The fundamentals of product management, as outlined in PMTK, are universal. There is always a market problem, defined solution, and development work to build the chosen solution.
Different techniques and emphasis are employed in product planning and product marketing, subject to market type, but product management principles remain consistent.
A Great Product Manager
What are the traits of a great product manager? This is a common question on many social media forums.
The answers posted are an endless list:
“Adaptable, analytical, balanced, charisma, coder, collaborative, confidence, creativity, curiosity, decisive, desire, eagerness, empathy, execution, honesty, humility, influencer, innovative, insight, inspire, intuition, iterative, leadership, learner, mindfulness, ownership, passion, patience, perseverance, persuasive, poise, pragmatic, presenter, proactive, resilience, resourceful, responsibility, technical, thinker, versatility, vision, etc...”
Particularly under the Generalization approach to product management, the product manager title became grossly misunderstood and a catch-all phrase for many shifting responsibilities, including tasks offloaded from other corporate functions.
Product management and product manager have become euphemisms for nearly anything and everything at many startups and companies.
In PMTK, the product manager is a highly strategic role responsible for managing the market problem which the product solves.
In PMTK, a product manager's traits are intelligence and a strong command of the English language. These two traits are the core of a role that is analytical and owned by a communicator.
Summary
The trend of renaming, rebranding, and rearranging pre-existing terms, phrases, and ideas in product management is done for marketing purposes or to provide something simple and easy to remember.
Maybe to project a sense of something new and improved. But it is not.
Overall, rebranding basic proven concepts will not make them better or clearer.