In this series of articles, we describe how Product Management requires exceptional people (at least in the statistical sense). This second article explores another dimension: the management of time horizons.
An earlier article showed the breadth of skills required to create strong product value, and thus contribute to the company's sustainability and growth. Indeed, one of the Product Manager's challenges is to develop a global vision while maintaining a sensitive understanding of the "details" that differentiate the product for the user.
Managing the present & imagining the near and distant future
The Product Manager must create a strong dynamic around the product, motivating and facilitating sufficient involvement of stakeholders at all useful stages.
It must include in its product thinking :
- the organization's strategic priorities,
- the organization's characteristics (strengths and weaknesses, current and future),
- external characteristics (current and future market opportunities and threats, product innovation trends, etc.).
The various scenarios it projects are based on assumptions, some of which are known, while others are uncertain or evolving.
Despite these uncertainties, he must choose the scenario that seems the most realistic and the most valuable.
On this basis, which can (and often will) evolve, the Product Manager structures future contributions and feedback from stakeholders, to design a satisfying and innovative product.
So he has to imagine: who to get to contribute? when? on what subject? while managing the conceptual dependencies of product realization.
It's crucial to mobilize these stakeholders early on, without over-dimensioning their involvement, as this could make it difficult for them to be available. The Product Manager must therefore anticipate and plan workshops well in advance, right from the start of the project.
But this is precisely when visibility is at its lowest and uncertainty at its highest (see the cone of uncertainty described here). This is because the customer does not yet have all the necessary information, or certainty about certain aspects of the product.
In addition, the Product Manager needs to detect likely maturation needs in advance.
These maturation times can also vary: for example, some topics will require several workshops (to absorb, share, align, etc.) with specific intermediate decanting times, whereas a single workshop will suffice for other topics.
The next article will detail this challenge, which is multiplied when combined with different time horizons.
Managing the lifecycle to maximize ROI
Finally, the Product Manager must have a long-term, global vision of the product life cycle. To maximize ROI, he or she compares different product life-cycle scenarios.
This involves defining the investment horizons for a product or range of products. Revenues and associated costs are to be considered over the life of the product.
A common mistake in budget sizing is to focus on the cost of creating the product (the "Build" phase). The reason generally given is that Run and Build are two distinct budget lines.
However, the ROI of a product depends on its overall cost, i.e. the sum of Build and Run costs.
Indeed, during the product's lifecycle, other costs are added which are potentially difficult to control. These include maintenance, support and technical migration costs. Similarly, budgeting should take into account decommissioning and reversibility costs.
The aim of Product Management is to plan all investments in order to maximize the product's overall and sustainable profitability.
Serving the present without compromising the future
In addition to this global vision of the budget, there's another factor that impacts the control of the product budget.
In fact, the Product Manager has to arbitrate on a number of product options (scope, implementation, etc.). But there's a recurring pattern here: the opposition between the tangible interest of the day, and the creation of value in the medium or long term (for example, having a product that can be maintained and upgraded).
When the immediate stakes are high (sell more licenses, penetrate a market early, demo at a trade show, etc.), it's tempting to mortgage the distant creation of long-term value.
This typical situation then leads to the solution of quickly cobbling together something that meets the need. Of course, this is only temporary. We promise ourselves that we'll square away this temporary tinkering, as soon as the shot has been fired.
In my experience (and that of the other Smartview agile coaches), this provisional can be found, unchanged, several years later.
In concrete terms, provisional generally implies an inadequate solution from a quality point of view. For example: security flaws, unmaintainability (hard-coded variables, windev code in buttons, lack of documentation), performance problems, wart inconsistent with the rest of the application, etc.
As a reminder, the costs of the Run phase are indexed to the quality of the Product.
The immediate gains are therefore outweighed, sometimes by far, by the additional costs of this so-called temporary solution, which has in fact become a component of the application.
This article illustrates the adventures of technical debt.
A good trade-off therefore integrates this global vision to preserve value over the entire life of the product. It is therefore sometimes necessary to resist the temptation to short-cut immediate gains (time-to-market, functional richness, etc.) for a better overall gain.
Conclusion
The Product Manager plays a crucial role in projecting future scenarios over various time horizons, despite present uncertainties. He collects and decodes all inputs to understand the situation (current or emerging in the background).
This ability to navigate between the present and the future, while mobilizing and motivating stakeholders, makes Product Management a difficult art. In the next article, we'll explore this complexity of stakeholders and time horizons.
This explains why investing in Product Management, by training and supporting these professionals, is essential for any organization wishing to remain competitive.
How does your company train, coach and support its Product Managers?
