Who Needs Product Management?

Here is an excerpt from an excellent article by Barbara Nelson of Pragmatic Marketing (click the title link to view the complete article on their website):

"You need product management if you want low-risk, repeatable, market-driven products and services. It is vastly easier to identify market problems and solve them with technology than it is to find buyers for your existing technology."

"Product Management identifies a market problem, quantifies the opportunity to make sure it's big enough to generate profit, and then articulates the problem to the rest of the company. We communicate the market opportunity to the executive team with business rationale for pursuing the opportunity including financial forecasts and risk assessment. We communicate the problem to Development in the form of market requirements; we communicate to Marketing Communications using positioning documents, one for each type of buyer; we support the sales effort by defining a sales process supported by the requisite sales tools so that the customer can choose the right products and options."

"If you don't want to be market-driven, you don't need product management. Some companies will continue to believe that customers don't know their problems. Some companies believe that they have a role in furthering the science and building the next great thing. These companies don't need product management; they only need project management, someone to manage the budgets and schedules. But these companies also need to reexamine their objectives. Science projects cannot be made into products in the short-term. Don't expect revenues if your company is focused on the "R" in Research and Development. Product management can guide you in the "D" in R&D, the development of technology into problem-solving products. "