4. Agile Product Management

4.1 How Organizations Manage Products

Guide to Product Ownership Analysis

IIBA.org KnowledgeHub Guide to Product Ownership Analysis 4. Agile Product Management 4.1 How Organizations Manage Products

A healthy portfolio of products acts as a barometer of success for most organizations by:

Instilling confidence and assurance in employees
Generating financial success
Creating ongoing value for customers

Organizations often start with a single successful product and create a cohesive portfolio consisting of high-value products and services. The challenge is to create a range of successful products that:

Provide a broader choice for customers
Help the organization thrive in the competitive landscape
Reduce management complexity

Traditional product management falls short in managing so many moving parts. Managing a portfolio of products, each of which may be at a different stage of the product lifecycle, requires focus on:

Sharing cross-functional resources
Prioritizing value delivery
Maintaining customer focus
Creating desired business outcomes

POA practices can be integrated, to create a compelling value proposition for customers. These practices include but are not limited to:

Product Portfolio Management: Combine customer, market, and competitive analysis with technical innovation to discover and design product offerings that align with enterprise strategy and brand.
Product Development: Develop product, and optimize customer value and costs with systematic tools and processes, including:
- Applying effective product engineering
- Designing customer experience
- Managing usable releases
- Maintaining product quality
Product Communication: Constantly and effectively communicate with key stakeholders effectively by:
- Identifying key stakeholders
- Managing communication modes
- Maintaining communication
Product Strategy: Discover innovative product concepts with a distinct value proposition focused on targeted customer needs, by:
- Using delivery and service models
- Building business cases
- Managing risk
Product Planning and Lifecycle Management: Provide a systematic structure for managing products through stages that assumes end-to-end responsibility for a product, including:
- Defining product scope
- Building product roadmap
- Estimating financials that create customer value
Product Feedback and Data Analysis: Learn via data analysis and elicit customer feedback by:
- Having directed conversations
- Consolidating feedback
- Analyzing Analytics
Product Marketing: Understand the customer and align the products with:
- Customer analysis
- Go-to-market planning
- Product launches
- Customer relations
- Sales planning
Product Support: Provide best-in-class services for technical support to customers. Without this support, many products can suffer in the marketplace as customers become frustrated and move to a competing product.
Product Research: Conduct ongoing research to understand the company’s market, personas, and competitors.