Throughout many years of working with different companies, it is amazing how many people say the product sells itself. Yet the truth in many cases is:

• The solution has cost far more than it had to because they didn’t truly understand their market needs, so compensated by building everything a customer wants.
• They had no control on costs and this means no control on profit
• The price normally was too low, as no understanding of the competition or value was understood
• The product was not used to its full potential, so customers didn’t understand the true benefit
• The business doesn’t understand the value of the solution, so direction of where the business is going is organic, with no true vision.

Getting the Product culture right

This is where Product Managers are able to add value to a company. They drive the commercial success of a product and lead the cross functional teams to deliver a solution that meets the needs of customers and drives the greatest growth for the business. It is an important organisational role that:

• Sets the Vision and Strategy for the business solutions,
• Communicates the roadmap
• Defines the feature definition for a product or product line.
• (The position may also include marketing, forecasting, and profit and loss (P&L) responsibilities. In many ways, the role of a product manager is similar in concept to a CEO of a solution)

Product managers provide the deep product expertise needed to lead the organisation and make strategic product decisions which is why they analyse market and competitive conditions. They lay out a product vision that is differentiated and delivers unique value based on customer needs. The role spans many activities from strategic to tactical and provides important cross-functional leadership most notably between engineering, marketing, sales, and support teams.

The Product Manager needs to lead cross-functional teams from a product’s conception all the way through to its launch. Therefore, they are the person responsible for defining the Why? When and What? of the product that the engineering team builds – and it’s ultimate success.