Support functions undeniably contribute to any value creation and condition the company's financial results. That said, the Product Manager appears to be the real determinant of sustainability and growth.
Yet many companies fail to implement effective Product Management, jeopardizing their competitiveness. Discover the challenges, common mistakes and solutions for strengthening this strategic function and training solid, competent Product Managers.
What is Product Management?
Product Management is an essential function for designing, developing, optimizing and managing the product lifecycle. This ranges from launch phases to strategic adjustments such as investment or decommissioning.
The Product Manager's mission is to ensure that the products launched on the market meet customer expectations and support the company's strategic objectives. This pivotal role lies at the intersection between vision and strategic stakes, market and business knowledge, the various players involved, and the many elements of realization and implementation. It has a direct influence on the success of organizations.
Every organization should remain firmly anchored to this fundamental axis, which is the realization of its value proposition. Yet many companies find it difficult to do this effectively.
So, sometimes, as time goes by (and temporary accommodations are made), the essential character of Product Management is lost sight of.
In different contexts and sectors, we regularly come across critical situations where effective, strong product management is lacking.
Here are a few examples of situations that illustrate this, and a few ways to remedy them.
Case 1: Product Management entrusted to juniors with insufficient experience
Sometimes, Product Management is entrusted to junior staff (for example, due to recruitment difficulties). Admittedly, these people may have business knowledge. But the major difficulty is that they are probably not equipped to take on this type of role. Especially as they are not trained in Product Management techniques and tools.
Case 2: Product Management assigned to reassigned experts
Following reorganizations, some companies assign business experts to Product Management, thinking that their sector expertise will suffice.
However, to be a good Product Manager, it's not enough to be a good business expert.
This role requires specific skills. These include rapid decision-making, adaptability, and a product vision rooted in the realities of the market and production constraints. Without the right training, there's a risk that business experts will neither know nor master the specific tools and techniques needed to develop these skills.
Understanding the role and knowing the tools and techniques are often the keys to success in such a delicate role. In this case, learning by doing is a very risky gamble, and one that we advise our customers against.
It's the most common mistake we make in business. And it's often a very costly one.
First, the person is set up to fail. They are either untrained, or lack the support they need to understand their role, and the tools and techniques that will be useful to them. In short, they don't have the means to take ownership of their role and succeed.
More often than not, the organization underestimates the difficulty of the role. It neglects the importance of investing in initial training to enable the person to truly understand the role.
Secondly, it delays the moment when the organization will finally have an effective Product Management force. Meanwhile, the risk of degrading value-creation potential is high. This puts the company in a position of relative weakness in its sector. The cost of delaying the availability of this critical resource is often substantial. In effect, the organization falls behind while its competitors innovate.
Incidentally, this mistake can also hinder and compromise agile approaches. And yet, these are often useful (and sometimes indispensable) for effectively delivering value.
Case 3: scattering of Product Management responsibilities
In complex organizations, different roles may share Product Management responsibilities. This is often done more to respond to the circumstances of the moment, than out of pragmatism. However, without clear coordination and a "captain" to set the course, this fragmentation can lead to a lack of coherent vision and contradictory or hazardous decisions.
The Product Manager/Product Owner pairing is a common occurrence. The appropriateness of this pairing is often linked to the care with which the roles have been defined, and the means of appropriating each of the roles mobilized. This division of responsibility between two people calls for heightened vigilance. This is all the more true if they are not sufficiently familiar with the tools and techniques of Product Management.
Case 4: Product Management reduced to an execution role
Sometimes, Product Management is limited to declining, retranscribing and executing a vision predefined upstream. Yet a good Product Manager must constantly validate and adjust the value proposition for the market. This over-reductive approach does not ensure that essential insights are integrated. Nor does it ensure that product definition has been sufficiently challenged.
A Product Manager masters the tools and techniques needed to thoroughly test the market suitability of a planned product or service.
This process of "grilling" the idea of a product/service, or its evolution, is a demanding one. It requires time, a full intellectual investment, and the mastery of specific tools and techniques.
It's difficult for people with other functions in the company to do this.
Indeed, executives, marketing or business experts, etc. bring extremely valuable and relevant vision and insights to the table. But no matter how powerful their product visions may be, the work of Product Management will, at the very least, validate this vision. Quite often, it will also enable them to refine or pivot. For example, by integrating customer segments outside the initial framework, or by specializing product positioning.
Let's take another example: trade-offs are necessary during the course of a project. This may involve reducing the budget or the deadline.
In this common situation, a Product Manager who truly and intimately masters the product, from design to detail, will be best equipped to remove what can be removed. All this, without degrading the product's value. This lacework requires a deep and detailed understanding. It would be difficult to achieve with the intellectual and emotional commitment of a mere executor.
Case 5: Product Management is provided in addition to other functions
This is the situation, for example, of a start-up in the early stages of its growth, where the company's founding director is unable to delegate this function, even though he is responsible for other equally important functions linked to strategy and business growth.
This example combines cases 3 and 4.
How do you train strong, competent Product Managers?
These few situations illustrate the difficulties of having an operational Product Management team, even though it gives substance to the company's strategy. Its role goes far beyond simple project management, as it directly influences the company's innovation strategy and profitability. By ensuring that every product meets market needs, Product Management helps companies stay relevant and competitive in a constantly changing environment. It's not just a question of designing a product, but of creating sustainable, innovative, high value-added solutions.
To meet the need for well-trained, solid and seasoned Product Managers, Smartview's agile team has designed a demanding, certifying training module for Montpellier Business School, dedicated to this profession.
Having run one of these sessions myself with trainees, I was able to measure the progress and depth of mastery of the role. This takes place over 10 days spread over 4 months, even for those with considerable experience.
This investment has enabled them to extend their mastery of technical tools, discover new approaches and experiment. This time of gradual maturation has enabled them to take full ownership of their role, by recreating the working conditions and challenges encountered in Product Management.
This type of pedagogical format often saves time when compared to a skills upgrade via coaching, for example.
Training Product Managers does not solve all the difficulties involved in setting up this key function within the organization. However, professionalizing the role unblocks a large number of difficulties and validates the prerequisites. For this reason, training tailored to the issues at stake is the royal road to having Product Management at the targeted level.
