Navigating the Evolution of Product Management: Is Product in Crisis?
What’s the state of Product management? How should you act as a Product leader? Is Product in crisis? We sat down with Beks Yelland, Product Leader and Founder of The Female Product Lead to discuss the big issues. Here are the highlights.
A perspective on product
“The success of the product is the success of the business,” says Beks. There’ll always be a demand for profitable solutions that serve user needs. So the valuable contribution of product expertise will always be critical—even in the face of new AI-based approaches. Sure, AI can do the heavy lifting—managing repetitive, data-heavy tasks like gathering user feedback, analysing data patterns, and even predicting market trends. But true product management requires a nuanced understanding of user needs, the problem a customer is trying to solve, market dynamics, tech stack limitations and organisational goals. AI can’t do that (yet).
It’s certainly true though that roles within product have evolved—and will continue to do so. Indeed, the number of product management roles has grown at pace over the last decade—very much in line with the broader trend of putting the user at the centre of development. With over one million product people in the world today, Beks is clear that this is a growing discipline rather than one at risk.
There are issues, of course. The main gripe being that while Product leaders play a key role in the critical task of helping firms become ever more customer-centric, or facilitating growth, they rarely have a seat on the board. Product leaders develop a deep understanding of customer needs, pain points, and behaviours. The higher they go, logic suggests, the more impact they can have on making sure business strategies, investments, and overall organisational goals remain closely aligned with customer needs. Organisations are beginning to welcome Product leaders into the boardroom, but it has been a slow process and many great people are still missing out on having a seat at the table.
Then there’s the growing practice of bringing in Product leaders from other disciplines like Sales or Marketing. While the moves can bring valuable perspectives, they can for those new to Product be pretty controversial and raise a number of questions (that we touch on later).
A decade of evolution
Since the 2000s, the definition of product management as a discipline has been transforming alongside the technology it supports. With the introduction of big data analytics tools, for example, product leaders are more able to leverage that data to drive ‘the right’ product decisions. Not only that, data now has a big part to play in evaluating the impact of both the product and the role itself. Something that looks set to become more prevalent over the next few years.
If the tools have evolved, so has the importance of Product. Back in 2010, Martin Erkison’s Venn diagram put Product managers at the very centre of UX, tech, and business. Among other things, this illustrates the role’s connections across departments. Today, Beks has updated this model to visualise how product roles add value right across the business. Take a look below.
Beks also points to the emergence of product operations or ProductOps. This relatively new function has developed to streamline the processes, tools, and data that support product development teams—helping them work more efficiently. This is a strategic move that’s all about supporting data-driven decision-making and improving cross-functional collaboration to support better product outcomes.
Tackling today’s challenges
While the importance of product roles is becoming increasingly recognised in tech, Beks says there’s a lack of consistency across companies, and that the absence of a clear definition of the impact or expectation of these senior positions (like Chief Product Officer) has led to a wider lack of adoption. But with product leaders often deeply involved in day-to-day product decisions, transitioning to more executive roles, which requires a shift from operational thinking to a more strategic, company-wide, longer time horizon perspective, which is not always easy, and even harder if the rest of the C-Suite have no formula on what to expect from their CPO or VP.
Beks also points to another problem—that many organisations have textbook views of what these senior product roles should be, often far too one dimensional to be effective. This can often exclude and discourage people from hiring product leaders, or from product people being set up for success as they step into these roles.
As mentioned earlier, we’re seeing executives being hired from other disciplines into product leadership roles. For Beks, there are vast differences between (for example) marketers or consultants, and traditional product people. Without the skills gained from a broad set of experiences in product management, they’ll approach the job entirely differently. With limited disciplinary understanding, they’ll certainly be a steep learning curve.
Looking to the future
As product ‘responsibilities’ continue to expand and as disciplines merge, Beks sees a raft of new roles on the horizon. For example, she sees increased movement between design and management. But, she believes, the core principles of product leadership will remain the same.
Product teams should also find themselves becoming increasingly responsible for the commercial success of their products, and not notional responsibility, like commercial teams, this may involve a base salary with commission. Beks thinks this shift is likely—even favourable—as being measured means it’s easier to prove your worth and (hopefully) reap the benefits, this will not of course suit all product teams but where it will drive focus and remove distractions in highly competitive markets it’s certainly worth considering.
Beks adds that the consistent inclusion of specialist CPOs within the C-Suite is another change that would benefit both product people and businesses. Ensuring the broad sets of values that deep disciplinary experience brings are given air time at the table.
So no, Product is clearly not a discipline in crisis and judging from two decades of sustained growth, is here to stay. What Product people are doing is wrestling with the same types of critical challenges that face all businesses: what problems to be solving, for whom and how to solve them incrementally.
Product is a career unlike any other which will put you smack in the middle of the action and for those who can manage the pace, it is the only career they would choose for themselves.
The role of confidence
Imposter Syndrome is very common in the tech industry, everyone—bar the very few and far between narcissists, says Beks—suffers from it. Unfortunately we are still seeing that women are more susceptible to feeling unqualified for leadership roles, even if they have previously held senior positions. This can be career-debilitating, so finding ways to boost your self-confidence is crucial.
This observation led Beks to reaching out to like-minded Product people, and increasing mentoring, joining and founding communities as well as starting a CV clinic. It felt empowering to share knowledge and experience gained from decades of working in the field to the new product generation. Posting on LinkedIn’s a great way to start, but in-person connections are much more beneficial.
Beks community focus is The Female Product Lead community which she founded The Product Mind, where she is a community leader. In both the formula is simple, connecting aspiring leaders and product people with seasoned mentors, creating a safe space for personalised advice and lifting up the leaders of today by reminding them how awesome they are. With the CV Clinic the same formula was applied, connecting candidates with product leaders with hiring experience, honing CVs to shine a light on the outcomes product professionals have achieved with many seeing the job offers come rolling in!
To hear more from industry experts like Beks, check out our Team Takeover podcast series.