WORLD-CLASS PRODUCT MANAGEMENT

RE-DEFINING THE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT FUNCTION
Experiential approaches to make your product management world class.

The product managers of the future need to think like the CEO of the product. They are the glue that bind many functions that touch product engineering, design, sales, marketing, operations, finance, legal, and others. Their role is expanding due to the growing importance of data analytics, an increased focus on customer experience design, and the evolution of product development processes and methods.

Dr. Martin Möhrle
Strategy, Organisation & People
THE FUTURE ROLE OF A PRODUCT MANAGER

Many companies are either engeneering or sales driven. Their product managers are either technologists focusing on technological solutions or business-oriented maximizing specific sales metrics. While both archetypes might be equally successful in their business, many CEOs see the need to review and redesign their product management function in the light of our digital world.

BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH & CO-CREATION SPRINTS TO REDESIGN PRODUCT MANAGEMENT

ACTIVITIES:

  • Analyze current business model
  • Describe likely evolution of business model
  • Analyze overall organizational structure
  • Analyze key processes and interfaces (e.g. engineering, design, sales, marketing, operations, finance, legal, …)
  • Analyze current product management (PM) practices and capabilities
    • PM roles & responsibilities
    • PM process governance
    • PM ownership
    • PM interfaces
    • PM metrics
    • PM tools
    • PM capabilities/ profiles (education/ career background of PM team)

RESULT:

  • Initial condensation, evaluation potential of status quo

ACTIVITIES

  • Screening of a great variety of sources on best or poor product management practices (research, cases, news, think tanks, foundations, reports etc.)
  • Covering B2C as well as B2B
  • Factor out
    • Product managememt maturity model
    • best/ worst practices
    • trends
    • possibly conduct vs content
  • Possible and probable foci:
    • process governance/ ownership and interfaces
    • digitalization trends
    • market intelligence and customer experientials
    • segmentation and B2B influencer marketing
    • managing the product/ brand roadmap
    • commercialization (P&L)

RESULT:

  • Destillation of key findings within extant knowledge

ACTIVITIES

  • Screening of a great variety of sources on best or poor product management practices (research, cases, news, think tanks, foundations, reports etc.)
  • Covering B2C as well as B2B
  • Factor out
    • best/ worst practices
    • trends
    • possibly conduct vs content
    • product managememt maturity model
  • Possible and probable foci:
    • process governance/ ownership and interfaces
    • digitalization trends
    • market intelligence and customer experientials
    • segmentation and B2B influencer marketing
    • managing the product/ brand roadmap
    • commercialization (P&L)

RESULT:

  • Destillation of key findings within extant knowledge (as input for sprint 2)

ACTIVITIES

  • Production of a new, creative, precise – possibly disruptive – but certainly innovative blueprint of a customized world-class product management, entailing detailed information on
    • Structures and processes
    • PM roles & responsibilities
    • PM metrics
    • PM skills
    • PM competencies
    • PM tools
  • Evaluation of session results for each team/participant
  • Plenum discussion

RESULT:

  • Description of an innovative blueprint of a world-class product management in a digital world

ACTIVITIES

  • Define measures for a broadly supported best of breed solution
    • Structures and processes
    • PM roles & responsibilities
    • PM metrics
    • PM skills
    • PM competencies
    • PM tools
    • PM monitoring
  • Plenum discussion: evaluation and prioritization of the defined measures by
    • investment/time effort
    • expected impact (ROI)
  • Wrap-up of session results

RESULT:

  • Presentation of new product management blueprint and prioritized measures to CEO/CMO/management team

CHANGELEADERS help to shape the future product management function with a lot of experience in marketing, a fresh mind and a tailor-made mix of classic and agile methods.

We support the transformation with best practices information and maturity models, co-creation workshops, assessments, coachings and powerful experiential learning programs.

INCREASING SPEED & COMPLEXITY

Today product managers work on two speeds, they coordinate the mid-term product road map based on their long-term product vision, as well as the increasing number of short-term feature releases. While many products are becoming simpler for customers, product life cycles, frequent releases of new product features, related service offerings, multiple sales channels, dynamic pricing strategies, and branding are becoming more complex.

INCREASING IMPORTANCE OF DATA ANALYTICS

As the definition of a product today includes the entire user experience around the product, as well as the value chain in which the product competes, the product manager has to have broad functional knowledge and influence to shape product decisions. Due to the growing dominance of data in decision making, data analytics skills are critical to make effective use of the treasure trove of internal and external data.

KEY CAPABILITY AREAS FOR THE ASSESSMENT & DEVELOPMENT OF PRODUCT MANAGERS
CUSTOMER FOCUS

Ability to design customer-centric research and experiences throughout customer decision processes.

MARKET ORIENTATION

Ability to deeply understand market structures, developments, driving forces and competitive strategies.

STRATEGY ALIGNMENT

Ability to align product strategy with business strategy, and track key performance indicators and financial metrics.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Ability to deeply understand technology trends, define road maps and manage the product development life cycle.

PEOPLE SKILLS

Ability to lead cross-functional teams, communicate with diverse stakeholder groups and drive cross-organizational change.

INNOVATION CULTURE

Ability to create an agile test-and-learn culture and innovation environment offering enriching career opportunities for talents.

Download Whitepaper:
World-Class Product Management

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