The Purpose of a Product Management Function

My musings on why Product Management exists

Update: Apr 23: I have been receiving feedback on elaborating further on the discipline. This is a byte-sized article on Product Management. I will be writing more, shortly. If this resonates, be sure to follow me to be notified.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the true purpose of a product management function.

I segued into Product Management from Project Management — where I had it relatively easier. I existed to deliver projects in time, within quality and budget. Sure, I had days where I wanted to rip my hair off (or punch someone [I didn’t]), but I knew where things were going. There was a plan to track progress against. When things slipped, I had a plan for that too. To try and get things back on track.

But Product Management.

There are commonalities that span across organisations, yes. But there is also an ambiguity in defining what a product function does. This is largely attributed to the fact that the function does things differently (and different things) based on the organisation type, the market it operates in, the business goals, stage of growth, and even on who is running the show.

There is a multitude of things the function exists to do. Build products that users value. Build products that solve an underlying pain point in the most feasible way possible. Build products that make the cash register go ka-ching. Build products that…

But, I thought to myself, there must be a true purpose underneath all the ‘customisation’. And I narrowed it down to this.

The product function exists to ship better products that users value, faster.

Ship: Because, well, duh!

Better Products: To sustain, I need to be better than my competitors. How much better depends on the market and timing. If it’s a mature product, incremental updates based on continuous user discovery mostly works. But if starting up, 10x better is a good target to have.

That users value: May seem a little redundant with the previous phrase, but it's worth reiterating. It’s a declining business if users do not value my product. Initial excitement is replaced by frustration. Adoption takes a hit. And then zilch.

Bill Withers comes to mind. Ain’t no product when user’s gone…

Faster: Because I need to be proactive. And when I need to react, I need to be quick. Experiment, build on heuristics and not necessarily algorithms. If I don’t, someone else will.

So yeah, “Shipping better products that users value, faster” seems like a decent purpose of the product management function.

Thoughts?