- The brutal truth is: The Present State of the Product Management in 2023 is not good and needs improvements. As per the survey conducted by McKinsey & Company, 75 % of the Product managers surveyed say that Product Management functions are subpar or nonexistent at their company.
The survey concludes with three key points:
- Product Management best practices are not adopted in their company.
- Product management is a very nascent function in the company. The product managers are not empowered and lack the capabilities to deliver business outcomes.
- The Product Management function does not exist at all.
Product Management is the core function for Product Planning, Product Delivery and Product Marketing activities in Tech companies. Product management is the critical function for companies to grow and outwit their competitors and be the Market leaders. With this current state of product management, we must improve the capabilities of product management functions in software companies.
At Rebel Learning House, We are committed to this mission to uplift the product management capabilities of software companies.
These are the seven best practices shared by McKinsey & Company that can help Tech companies to uplift their product management capabilities:
- Focus on Product Discovery – Validate the value proposition of a feature before writing a single line of code. Validate the hypothesis before committing significant resources to development.
- Conduct customer behavior analysis – Observe customers in their natural environment – how they use the product and then derive customer insights. The emphasis is on User research and user interviews.
- Although the product-market fit is critical to early adoption and growth, a comprehensive understanding of business is as important in ensuring the long-term success of a product. Conduct Environmental Analysis, Competition analysis and partner ecosystem analysis. Good Product Managers have a 360-degree perspective of the Business and all the players involved in the market.
- Focus on Holistic impact and not just product adoption. Think End to End about Operations Team, Customer support, Users, Partners, Buyers, and other internal and external stakeholders that can be benefited.
- Shorten time to value for customers to less than an hour: Optimize the onboarding process so that customers realise the value of buying software immediately after purchase. Customers do not like to wait for months to realise the value of buying software. The onboarding process should be lightning-fast.
- Look beyond the expected to identify unidentified outcomes.
- Create ten times the value for customers than what is derived from them.
McKinsey & Company also shared the Product Management capability framework:
McKinsey recommends Product managers and leaders assess the current state of their company’s capabilities and begin their journey by identifying areas of opportunity across five dimensions and a set of enablers.
- Customer experience: Ability to design customer-centric experiences throughout the customer decision journey.
- Market orientation: Ability to deeply understand market trends, partner ecosystems, and competitive strategies.
- Strategy and business: comfort with business strategy, portfolio prioritization, go-to-market, pricing, and tracking key performance indicators and financial metrics.
- Technical skills: Ability to go deep on technology trends, architectural questions, stack control points, road maps, and management of the development life cycle.
- Leadership skills: Ability to lead teams, communicate with diverse groups, and influence change throughout the organization.
- Enablers: talent management, organization and governance, product planning and review processes, tools and data infrastructure.
The outcome is to uplift Business Strategic thinking of Product Management in 2023 in Tech centric organizations.
At Rebel Learning House, Our brand promise is to uplift the product management capabilities of your company.
We are on a mission to solve this problem for your company and train young tech professionals in your company so that they can think, act and succeed strategically and have holistic business thinking and a customer-centric approach in their decision-making.
This is the key to your Business growth.
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Reference – McKinsey