6 Problems that a Product Manifesto Must Take On
We’re on a journey to build the first-ever Product Management Manifesto by and for product people. (If you missed the first blog post announcing the formation of our working group check it out here).
And as product people, it’s logical that we start by asking: “What exactly are we trying to solve with this manifesto?”
This manifesto and principles must address the real challenges in the product field today. Not just ones our working group has experienced firsthand, but those voiced by the product community as a whole.
To uncover these we turned to the latest research and surveyed PMs directly. Here we’ve distilled pain points from recent “State of Product” industry reports and what you told us about your own product management challenges in our last survey. All told, these cover the combined experiences of 3000+ product people.
These highlight some of the urgent issues we must address in the soon-to-be Product Management Manifesto.
6 Core Challenges in Product Management Today
1. Identifying opportunities for my product
The million-dollar question (literally) for product people is: where is the market opportunity for my product?
It’s a race against the clock to understand and identify the right customer, market, industry, and feature set to unlock product success. This means constantly asking how do we:
Find these opportunities?
Balance user research with pressure to act now?
Convince our team to go with our ideas to tap into promising opportunities ahead?
Get help from other teams (user research, data science) to find even more opportunities?
And in today’s digital landscape, these questions come faster and more often with pressure for product innovation and speed to market. Notably, 51% of PMs admitted they collaborate with market research teams on only half of their projects (Source: 2020 Product Management Insights Report). Is this due to time constraints? Resources? Competing priorities? It’s all of the above. And it’s a persistent challenge complicating our ability to confidently steer products for today and tomorrow.
2. Creating a product strategy and narrative
You know you need to craft a compelling long-term strategy. But the future can feel like gazing into a crystal ball.
From roadmaps to narratives that explain the underlying “why,” PMs are tasked with identifying the essential product direction. This begs urgent questions of how to:
Figure out the best prioritization, tradeoffs, and decisions that will pay off long term?
Tell the right product “story” so that everyone else understands where we’re heading?
Prevent short-term pressure from undermining long-term strategy?
Deal with the pressure of this monumental task that falls to you?
These challenges aren’t new but are more acute today. Product development is moving at a faster pace with an ever-increasing turnover rate. Products themselves are growth vehicles and product people arbiters of that growth. Every team has a dependency on our strategy to get their work done.
Here’s an alarming stat from last year: 30% said a clearer product strategy was at the top of their wish list, but nearly 53% said they don’t have enough time to craft product roadmaps. (Source: 2020 Product Management Insights Report).
And this description of what roadmap prioritization feels like doesn’t exactly inspire a good night’s sleep: “This can feel like an exercise in nearly impossible tradeoffs, where the difference between one bet and another can have enormous but unknowable implications for the customer and company.” (Source: Pendo State of Product Leadership Report 2020).
3. Aligning product and company leadership with the vision
Standing between the vision and execution is...leadership. Securing buy-in is a top priority—and not an easy one.
It’s up to product teams to sell the story to the C-Suite, leading to uncertainty of:
How do I ensure my product vision is aligned with leadership goals?
My product is doing the right thing for users, but leadership doesn’t value it...how do I fix this?
How do I protect the roadmap we’ve agonized over for months from knee-jerk reactions of these “HIPPOs”?
With so much asked of product teams today, this alignment with decision-makers for investment, resources, and ultimately trust and time to bring the product to life demands an air-tight case. Then defending it. And it may mean compromising more than you’d like.
Case in point: many PMs admit they “don’t necessarily own” their roadmaps and aren’t always the “final arbiter of authority” on product decisions. Instead, decisions are often determined by the HIPPO (highest paid person’s opinion) such as a CPO or CEO (Source: Pendo State of Product Leadership Report 2020).
4: Navigating the organization to make the product successful
Once leadership has bought in, getting the rest of the organization on board is easy right? Unfortunately, no.
Executing a product vision requires cross-functional collaboration across personalities, organizational culture, and bandwidth-stretched teams. Product people are often faced with:
My launch depends on 10 teams that I have to convince for resources. How should I approach this?
What’s the best way to accomplish what we need without stepping on toes?
How do we convince them this needs to happen, or there will be no product?!
If we’re serious about embedding DE&I in what we’re doing, that means doing things differently from the past...and accepting change. How can we best navigate this?
It’s a balance to prevent assumptions, politics, and ways of working to overshadow what’s best for the product. This forces product people into frequent consensus-building mode.
It turns out many product managers see getting consensus on product direction as their #1 challenge. 27% cited internal politics as a top pain point and frequent need to find resolutions before product strategy implementation can move forward. (Source: Product Plan 2021 State of Product Management Annual Report).
Right now we’re in an urgent moment to question and risk friction with organizational norms. Our field faces a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) imperative. This means stepping up to challenge our ways of thinking--and that of other teams. And product people must do it even if we face resistance, more consensus building, and an uphill battle.
5: Staying focused in our execution
While strategy gets all the attention, it’s the execution that counts. Translating strategy into something a wider product team can execute will make the difference between success and failure.
For product people, this sparks ongoing questions of:
I have a long list of ideas, how do I narrow it down to enable us to focus?
How can we avoid reactive vs proactive tasks--and constant firefighting?
What should we focus on to make the most progress ASAP?
Am I getting dragged into too much and losing sight of where I can be most impactful?
It’s hard to stay focused when you’re on the hook for daily crisis management too. Product managers reported spending 52% of their time on “unplanned firefighting activities.” (Source: Product Plan 2021 State of Product Management Annual Report). That’s half of their time spent on reactive work vs proactive work they wanted to accomplish. What’s more, it has a ripple effect on the entire team now distracted from the intended goals.
6: Misunderstanding of the Product Management role
Everyone knows exactly what product people do, right? Wrong.
Not all organizations recognize the value of product management as a central and strategic role. There’s confusion about swimlanes and responsibilities, leading to concerns of:
I’m doing more project management vs product management, how do I change the balance here?
How can I get other teams to see us as less of a delivery role vs strategic contributors?
Does senior leadership really understand our value?
Other teams don’t work the same way we do...the process is so inconsistent here.
The problem now is that pressure for product-led growth ups the ante on what product teams are expected to deliver. When other teams misunderstand the role, or perceive it too narrowly, these misaligned expectations create friction day to day.
Too many PMs face the confusion of Product Manager vs Product Owner, senior leadership that doesn't “get them,” and reality that they’re “seen as a delivery function, not a thought leadership function.” (Source: Product Focus 2021 Product Management Industry Survey). It falls to product people to advocate and educate others in order to assert our seat at the table.
Why We Need a Set of Principles for Product Management
Taken all together, these challenges demonstrate just how much we need a set of underlying principles of product management.
These are just some of today’s pressure points. There are many more. And more will emerge as we move forward. So we must address the void to help guide the way.
There’s no denying that product management’s time in the spotlight has arrived. That’s why we need a way to validate our decision-making, and continually ask: “Are we being consistent with our principles?” A common baseline we come back to throughout our paths forward. One that meets our cultural moment of DE&I, and 21st-century realities of the field.
We also understand that everyone’s product management journey is different. That’s why our working group is actively tuning into the voices of product people worldwide to hear about what they’re facing. Our next step? Start drafting up our ideas for principles that can help.
Join Us! Be Part of the Product Manifesto
Here’s how you can learn more about the Product Management Manifesto and stay up to date on our next steps:
Productmanifesto.com
Read all about our mission, meet our working group members, and follow our roadmap.
Substack Newsletter
Subscribe for updates as the manifesto takes shape and share your comments.
Share with Your Network
Tweet now to share with your network and bring more product people along for the ride.
Made with ❤️ by Product People
PS: stay tuned for more blog posts to come about other challenges!