Product management: from idea to decommissioning

Effective product management allows companies to create in-demand solutions, optimize resources and increase competitiveness. We explain what the product management process involves: from strategy definition and market analysis to development, launch and further development. We analyze key stages, roles of participants and features of the Agile approach in product management.

What is product management?

Management covers the entire product life cycle: from the inception of the idea to the moment when the product leaves the market. Along the way, one of the main tasks of the product manager is to advocate for the interests of the users within the company, but the PM’s goals do not stop there, as product management is at the intersection of three areas:

1. Business: understanding the market, competitors, and ways to monetize.
2. Technology: knowledge of opportunities and limitations in development.
3. User experience: creating user-friendly and attractive solutions.

A good manager knows how to speak the language of each of these areas and integrate them into a cohesive whole. According to a Gartner survey, in 52% of companies, the product team is responsible for growth strategy.

Example: Slack started as an internal tool for game developers, but the product team saw potential in a broader application. They focused on usability and integrations, resulting in one of the most popular communication tools in business.

Product management is not just a set of techniques and tools, but a mindset focused on creating value for users and the business. A manager must ask themselves: are we solving a real problem, who needs it and why, and how will we realize we’ve succeeded? Answering these questions helps to focus on the main thing and not waste resources on secondary tasks.

Stages of the product management process

A product goes through a number of standard stages during its lifecycle, but they don’t always follow a strict order. In an agile development approach, the stages are often intertwined and repeated cyclically. The key is to always keep the user needs and business goals in focus.

Let’s look at the stages of the process using the Amazon example:

1. Generation of product and feature ideas

In this stage, the team gathers ideas from a variety of sources. Feedback from customers is key – both direct feedback through surveys and interviews, and other sources such as user behavior analysis. Vendors and partners who see the market from a different angle can help. The team brainstorms to gather innovative ideas and analyzes the results of past experiments.

Any idea can become the foundation for a new product, such as what happened with Dropbox – the company started when its creator, Drew Houston, forgot his thumb drive at home and was unable to work on the project. Out of a personal problem grew the idea of creating a cloud storage service.

2. Developing a WBD (“work from the end”)

Amazon works using the Working Backwards method, which involves creating a PR/FAQ document: a press release and FAQ that describes the product as if it had already been released. This method helps the team focus on the value to the customer.

3. Prioritization

The team evaluates and ranks ideas based on pre-agreed metrics. There are quite a few metrics and methods for prioritization, such as RICE models, MoSCoW, WSJF, and others. Prioritization allows you to focus on the most important aspects of the product and reduce time-to-market.

4. User Stories



This stage compiles User Stories that describe how the customer will use each feature. User Stories help developers understand the context and goals of the users. Each feature is prioritized based on its importance to customers and business goals.

5. Creating a Business Requirements Document

Here, the PR/FAQ is transformed into a more detailed document that includes a prioritized list of features, detailed product specifications, and user interface mockups. This document links business goals and technical objectives.

6. Technical design and structure

In this phase, the technical team develops the architecture of the product. They create design drafts, discuss them with experienced engineers, and involve partner teams as needed. The product manager gets an approximate timeline for implementation and prepares a test plan. The team also discusses operational excellence, security and privacy issues.

7. Technical implementation and testing

This is where the product development begins directly. Engineers write code, test services and interfaces. They make sure that everything works with the expected availability and speed. The product manager works closely with the developers to make sure everything is on track.

8. Checking user scripts

In parallel with development, the product manager conducts user testing. The team goes through the entire process of using the product, trying to find bugs and problems. They check if everything works as intended, in all localizations and in all languages.

9. Final fixes and experiments

Based on the test results, the team makes final changes. The product manager prepares a detailed experiment plan. He determines what exactly needs to be tested and what metrics to track. This applies not only to user interaction metrics, but also to technical aspects of the product.

10. Testing, feedback and analysis

The team runs an experiment and collects data. In addition to quantitative metrics, it’s important to get qualitative feedback from users. There are times when numbers say one thing and users feel quite differently. It is important to analyze all aspects and make informed decisions about launching new features.

Roles of product management participants

Creating a successful product is a team effort, and in product management, each employee plays a unique role. Cross-functional teams bring together specialists from different areas to achieve a common goal, allowing you to look at the product from all angles and make more informed decisions.

Each member shares expertise and perspective on product development by performing their own pool of tasks. For example, developers are responsible for technical implementation, designers create a user-friendly interface, and marketers help communicate the value of the product to users. The diversity of competencies allows the team to respond quickly to market changes and user needs.

In small companies, one person can combine several roles. For example, in a startup, the founder can be both a product manager and a marketer. The key to success is not just having all of these roles, but having them work together and share a common vision of strategy.

Developing a product management strategy

Product strategy development is the process of creating a plan that will help the product achieve the company’s business goals. Let’s look at the main steps in this process:

1. Awareness of product goals

Start by defining clear goals, such as increasing the number of users from 1,000 to 10,000 per year or getting 80% of users to place an order. Goals should be specific and measurable, such as SMART formulated goals.

2. Context Research

Analyze the current state of the product: user requests for new features, product strengths and weaknesses, statistics on feature usage, competitors’ position. You need to involve other teams to collect data: analysts, marketers, developers.

3. Analysis of competitors and market trends

Conduct a thorough analysis of your competitors by studying their products, strategies and positioning. Identify competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to find opportunities to differentiate your product.

Research current and projected market trends, paying attention to technological innovations in your industry, changes in consumer behavior, new regulatory requirements, and economic factors affecting the marketplace

4. Make a task list

Based on research, create a list of potential tasks and projects, and then relate each item to product goals. For example, in developing a warehouse business application, the main goal might be to increase customer retention by 20% within a year. So you can identify potential tasks: developing integration with popular ERP systems, creating a mobile app for inventory, launching a training platform for customers, and optimizing the user interface.

Each of these tasks should be correlated with the main goal and understand how its fulfillment will affect the achievement of the result. In this example, we can assume that integrating with ERP systems will make the service more indispensable for existing customers, but creating a mobile app may not have a significant impact on retaining current customers. Thus, the initially long list of tasks will be reduced to more specific actions.

5. Prioritization

Determine which tasks are most important to achieve your goals. Use user research data and analytics. For example, if an app has 20% of users leaving at the registration stage, but only 5% at the payment stage, prioritize improving the registration process.

6. Formulate an action plan

Detail the selected tasks. Define specific steps for their implementation, for example: study user feedback, analyze competitors’ solutions, conduct A/B testing of options.

A strategy is a “living” document and can and should be adapted as new market and user data becomes available. To successfully strategize:

• don’t work on it alone – involve other teams and top management;
• focus on the main thing, don’t try to include all possible ideas in the strategy;
• gather feedback from all stakeholders on a regular basis;

Example Strategy

Here is an example strategy for a project management business application:

Product Portfolio Management

Product portfolio management is a continuous process of analyzing, making decisions, and adapting to changes in the market and customer needs. When a company expands from a single product to a whole ecosystem of interconnected solutions, portfolio management becomes a key challenge. This requires specialized systems to coordinate the development of all products. Such solutions help to see the connections between products, monitor their lifecycle and evaluate the contribution of each to the overall business goals.

When scaling a company’s product portfolio, it is necessary to take control of all the relationships and dependencies between the different products and ensure centralized management, while receiving timely information from the support team. Product portfolio management includes aspects such as:

• lifecycle management;
• working with hierarchy;
• building a product structure;
• creating a backlog for each product;

SimpleOne SDLC development management system helps in the following aspects of product portfolio management:

1. Lifecycle Management:
• allows you to track the development stages of each product through the statuses: Funnel, Planning, Development, Submission, Archive;
• helps to plan and control key development stages through product-related projects;
• allows you to analyze product performance at different stages through related tasks and releases;
• supports decisions about product development or closure based on project and task data;
2. Works with hierarchy:
• allows you to create a structure of products, including parent and child products;
• allows you to drill down to the module level, creating a multi-level hierarchy;
• provides links between products, modules and projects for holistic portfolio management
3. Build a complex structure:
• Supports the creation and management of product modules with their own life cycles;
• allows you to associate tasks with specific products and modules to accurately track progress;
• provides flexibility in organizing work through projects that can span multiple products or modules;
4. Create a structure and backlog for each product:
• provides tools for building a product backlog through tasks of different types (Epics, Features, User Stories);
• allows you to prioritize tasks within a product using the “Rank” field;
• provides visualization of product work through Kanban and Scrum project boards;
• supports release planning by linking releases to specific products and tasks;
5. Product portfolio analytics and reporting:
• allows you to track the progress of all products through a single interface;
• provides the ability to create customized reports to analyze the effectiveness of the product portfolio;
• provides data visualization through dashboards for strategic decision-making;
6. Flexible resource management:
• allows efficient allocation of human resources between products and projects
• provides tools for planning and accounting of labor costs at the task level, which helps in optimizing portfolio resources
7. Integration of development and support processes:
• allows you to generate technical debt for products;
• helps prioritize tasks based on ITSM elements;
• connects tasks with entities from ITSM;
• allows you to receive end-to-end notifications on task movements;

More about the integration of SDLC and ITSM was explained at the webinar and in the expert whitepaper from SimpleOne“SDLC and ITSM: a process of continuous product improvement” Experts share why it’s important to consider SDLC and ITSM together, and how you can establish effective collaboration between product and support teams. In the piece, we reveal how using a single platform enables the integration of development lifecycle management and service management processes, ensuring a continuous flow of value creation for customers.

Managing software product development using the Agile methodology

In Agile, product development happens incrementally, in small steps, with each iteration (sprint) lasting 1-4 weeks. Agile methodology assumes that the plan can and should change as development progresses – the team is willing to reprioritize tasks, add new features, and discard ideas that have not been reality tested. This allows us to respond quickly to changes in the market and user needs.

To create products that truly meet user needs, agile methodologies constantly interact with the target audience: they conduct castdevs, gather feedback, and make changes to the product. Instead of rare major releases, Agile teams release small updates on a regular basis. This way, you can get feedback quickly and reduce the risk of wasting time and resources on a failed release.

Teams that work according to Agile methodologies actively use visual tools to manage the development process: kanban boards to display the status of tasks, product backlog with a prioritized list of desired features, burndown charts to track team progress. Such tools help all participants in the process to quickly understand the current state of the project.

Agile in product management is a philosophy of constant movement and adaptation, so the team must be prepared for uncertainty, be able to make quick decisions and learn from mistakes. Agile methodologies work great for building products in an agile environment, but may not be suitable for projects with tight requirements and deadlines.

Summary

Product management requires strategic thinking, a deep understanding of the market and user needs. Successful managers know how to balance business objectives, technology capabilities, and user experience. They are not afraid to experiment, learn quickly from mistakes, and constantly adapt their approach.

Success in product management depends not only on following certain steps or methodologies, but also on the ability to build effective communication between all participants in the process. Flexibility, the ability to make decisions under uncertainty and a focus on creating value for the user are important skills for the product team.