Managing uncertainty is an essential skill in Product Management. Faced with uncertainty, the Product Manager has to move forward without perfect visibility, and sometimes even navigate in fog. In all cases, he or she must tame it, to steer the Product without being paralyzed by uncertainty.
To illustrate why Product Management requires exceptional people (at least in the statistical sense), a first article looked at the range of skills required to create product value and contribute to company growth.
A second article showed that the Product Manager structures stakeholder involvement. He anticipates the product life cycle, integrating costs beyond the Build phase, to maximize ROI.
A third article dealt with another Product Management challenge: projecting stakeholder issues over different time horizons.
Finally, a fourth article showed the complexity of the product trade-offs encountered by a Product Manager. This complexity is linked both to the design and realization of the Product, and to its environmental context.
In this fifth article, we look at a complementary aspect: the management of uncertainty through Product Management.
As a reminder, a Product Manager covers vast and diverse fields of intervention (see a summary of the role here).
Progressing through the cone of uncertainty
The cone of uncertainty is a graphical representation of the typical evolution of uncertainty during a project, with project milestones and milestones (on the horizontal axis), and the degree of error or variability of forecasts (on the vertical axis).
This concept illustrates two elements:
- Uncertainty is greatest at the start of the project. This is the moment when there are the most unknowns. The range of possible evolutions is vast: we could attempt to calculate it by applying the power n to each possible evolution (depending on n stakeholders, n new options arising, etc.).
- Uncertainty diminishes gradually, as the project progresses and information is gathered and consolidated. The range of possible evolutions is mechanically reduced as project decisions and feedback are made.
The level of uncertainty results in particular from the ratio between known/unknown and foreseeable/unforeseeable.
The advantage of this concept is its visual representation of risk management.
Indeed, risks are greater at the start of a project, both in terms of probability and potential impact. As these unknown or potentially variable elements are defined, the risks diminish mechanically.
I use this concept, usually used in software development, to explain the difficulties of Product Management. The concept was popularized by Mike Cohn, particularly for estimating.
On the x-axis, the passage of time: clearly, maximum uncertainty occurs at the start of the project.
Tame uncertainty with Product Management
In the first instance, therefore, the Product Manager is the one who bears this maximum uncertainty at the start of the project. This is necessarily a source of discomfort. Depending on the Product Manager's experience, this discomfort can range from moderate stress to decisions detrimental to the project.
This can lead to denial, a feeling of lack of control and anxiety.
In situations of heightened stress, this intranquillity can lead to forms of panic. This can result in decisions to withdraw (e.g., fear-motivated actions to justify oneself).
For example, a Product Manager who is uncomfortable with uncertainty may encounter 3 risks:
- Decide too early and fix structuring options without sufficient information or feedback (from the field, technical experts, etc.). The risk is an increase in time and cost (and at worst, a degraded product result, or even failure).
- Ignoring (sometimes unconsciously) alternative options or profitable changes to the product. Opportunities are lost.
- Choosing the most cautious and conservative options: he avoids all risk-taking, even reasonable and controlled ones. This can be to the detriment of innovation.
How do youbuild confidence in an environment dominated by uncertainty?
Here's another great challenge for the Product Manager!
Agility offers resources (notably transparency and risk sharing) for building collaboration based on trust. Agile frameworks and tools have been designed to create value in complex, uncertain situations.
Agile rituals and practices help to reduce uncertainty, with a user-centered approach and collaboration within the extended team to bring together all relevant expertise.
Uncertainty: when it's gone, it's still there!
Most unpleasant surprises are merely the outcome of a risk, already identified by an enlightened professional, as a hypothesis (more or less probable and more or less impactful).
It's a question of assessing foreseeable hypotheses, and therefore of expert debate.
But unpredictability can also be relative. It depends on the field of vision, and therefore on "where we are".
In concrete terms, a global pandemic caused by a coronavirus was one of the most likely scenarios for epidemiologists. As such, this scenario had been integrated by strategic risk analysts for over a decade. However, outside this circle of expertise, this scenario was non-existent.
From the point of view of non-professional health risk actors, such as a company director or a product manager, this risk does not exist. It is not in the field of vision, except in the case of science-fiction scenarios.
All these risks therefore remain invisible outside the field of specialization concerned: only experts in the field can see the evolution of risk factors.
It's obvious that the Product Manager of a health or entertainment product can't follow the evolution of risks outside his field. And yet, many risks with systemic effects can impact him (volcanic activity, the impact of a media trial, a dissolution, etc.). All this is completely unpredictable for this player. The best projections of a good Product Manager can be turned on their head.
This makes it even more impossible to predict with any certainty what will happen.
Which brings us to the final aspect of uncertainty.
Product Management's ability to question
The Product Manager is already active over several time horizons for fluid value production. He also works on several time horizons in terms of objectives, integrating known and probable data and assumptions.
He's already demonstrating his cerebral flexibility by unraveling what he's patiently built up, and integrating what creates product value: feedback from users, stakeholders and so on.
Added to this is the unforeseen nature of the market, the competition, internal developments within the company, and external events impacting its sector.
In concrete terms, let's take the example of the product roadmap: the Product Manager has optimized the time-to-market by dividing it into releases. Of course, he knows that he will have to update and reprioritize with feedback from the field, the rate of progress, new opportunities, etc.
However, sometimes the changes are greater than he imagined possible.
Then he will have to undo work he thought was behind him: this is thankless and emotionally difficult.
The Product Manager seeks to forge certainties, which are a foundation on which to move forward.
But he must remain ready to deconstruct it: this requires foresight and perseverance to go back, undo and redo.
The product manager's nightmare
Sometimes, and this is much more difficult, the backtracking is not caused by new data, but by a better understanding of the initial elements.
This is inherent to the business: in any design process, there are blind spots, optical effects, misreadings and misinterpretations.
However, it's hard to live with: the Product Manager has mobilized all his energy and talent to produce the best possible Roadmap ... and yet he hasn't seen everything!
This is because the Product Manager resolves a large number of hypotheses. He juggles with a large number of uncertainty factors: so, on volume, it's almost fatal that certain elements are not correctly taken into account.
A good Product Manager is not someone who makes no errors of judgement or oversights (that's a view of the mind, a theoretical ideal): it's someone who quickly corrects them, with modesty and pragmatism.
Errors of judgement are inevitable: dealing with them requires a great deal of courage and humility.
Uncertainty in the background
We have seen that the Product Management context is fundamentally uncertain: some parameters are unclear or unknown, and those that are known are likely to change at any time.
The Product Manager must be equipped and trained to seize new opportunities in the market context, in order to integrate them advantageously into his product roadmap.
This requires qualities, but also intellectual tools and support: going backwards, and undoing what you've built, is operationally and humanly difficult.
This ability to question oneself is demanding and difficult, and requires great humility. We'll develop this point in a later article.
In a nutshell: taming uncertainty & moving forward in the fog thanks to Product Management practices
Dealing with uncertainty can be trying. The Product Manager must be willing to go back on certain decisions and adjust his work, which can be difficult both operationally and on a human level.
A Product Manager is flexible in resolving uncertainties, constantly reassessing the situation and adjusting to ensure product success.
And you, how does your company help its Product Managers to develop specific skills to manage uncertainty? to develop their personal qualities, to refine their intellectual tools to adjust their choices throughout the product development process?
