What is Product Management?

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  Product discovery is the process of uncovering customers’ needs and business context and using that knowledge to evolve the product. The purpose is to ensure the right product-market or product-customer fit now and into the future. Alternatively, Marty Cagan defines the purpose of product discovery as: “...to quickly separate the good ideas from the bad. The output of discovery is a validated product backlog.”

There are multiple ways to conduct product discovery, including customer/stakeholder interviews, market research, development of persona/user journey, prototyping and testing. 

  Product delivery is about delivering the most value to the customer. This involves working with the developers, designers and other stakeholders to deliver product outcomes. Typically, product is delivered using agile, however products can be delivered in any way that best suits your team. Other delivery methods are kanban, waterfall, scrum or lean startup. The advantage of agile is that, in principle, it should lead to small continuous delivery of value instead of larger build and deploy increments. Tools that can be used to help align delivery to value are OKRs, user stories and acceptance criteria. 

  There are no set rules for product management. Developing product is complex and there are multiple ways to achieve the desired outcome. The skill itself is how you develop the product, for example, it could be knowing which tools to use or what questions to ask or which principles to lean into and then learning and adapting as you go. Beyond product discovery, strategy and delivery skills, essential skills also include the ability to derive customer insights and the ability to influence people (including stakeholders, business executives and teams). 

  As there are no rules to product management, product is often referred to as a mindset. This mindset is customer-focused and with an emphasis on why are we building the product. Who is this product for? Will the product provide the customer real value? What problem is it going to solve?