Context is everything

Some context

Obviously, it makes sense to know where you are before trying to go somewhere.

And there is no shortage of advice available for product managers. There are hundreds of websites, blogs, books, courses and experts willing to offer their opinions to whoever will read or watch or listen. A lot of the advice revolves around techniques to ensure that thinking of customers is the central concern of product management. All well and good.

At least as important as happy customers, however, is aligning product management efforts to what your organisation is trying to achieve. Your organisation exists for a reason and has goals (and hopefully those goals are explicit). To be successful, a product must help the organisation achieve its goals. Context really does matter.

It also makes sense to take the time to understand where you are before you set out on a journey: if you don’t know where you are, how can you get where you are going?

What is the context for product management? Each organisation is unique, but we can reduce “context” to a typical set of considerations.

First: Your goals

First, your goals.

Path to profit

What business model(s) is your organisation targeting, to make money? The choice of business model impacts product. Subscriptions, marketplaces, platforms, brokerage, services, …: the way you commercialise the product impacts what product you build.

Type of innovation

Are you inventing something truly new, or improving an existing thing? A lot of research has been done on removing barriers to different types of innovation, and understanding the type of innovation you are trying to do is a first step to efficiently achieving your goals.

Bigger picture

Are your goals part of a broader industry transformation? The move to music streaming is an example where many players were part of an entire industry shifting to new product technology (and business) models. The history of industry transformations is well researched and lessons can be learnt without repeating past mistakes.

Second: Your constraints

Scariness

How risky / complex are your goals? Building mission control software for a human journey to Mars differs in complexity and risk from an app that delivers weather forecasts to a mobile phone. Clearly the level of risk and complexity impacts the product management approach.

Maturity

How mature is your organisation? Size: The environment in a lean startup is different to a large multinational corporation. Capability: An organisation without repeatable processes and with no ability to learn from past mistakes is different from one with clear processes and continuous improvement ideas embedded. Product managers in organisations at different levels of maturity need to adjust how they go about their work.

The Iron Triangle

Every organisation and project (and therefore product) will have – in one way or another – time, cost and schedule constraints. Working within these constraints is obviously a consideration for product managers.

Putting it all together

Each of the 6 considerations above is a topic in itself. Later blog posts will dive into each of these.

In the meantime, have a think about your context. Do you understand your unique goals (path to profit, type of innovation, bigger picture)? Do you understand your unique constraints (scariness, maturity, your iron triangle)?

If not, try to step back and consider each. It might just change the way your take your product forward.