Product Management: the (urgent) importance of realigning with the economic reality of businesses!

David Spire, Partner at Converteo in charge of the Product Management practice, describes the paradigm shift in how products are conceived and the skills and objectives around which teams must restructure to adapt to this new reality.

Key takeaways

• We have long been accustomed to analyzing product success through user adoption, design aesthetics, and the fluidity of the experience.
• In the era we are entering, a product’s success largely depends on the teams’ ability to make it financially and operationally relevant for the business.
• Product teams must constantly strive to reconcile viability, desirability (user experience), and feasibility objectives.
• The best profiles will be those who have professional experiences outside the realm of product management, providing them with a broader and richer perspective to tackle the challenges of complex organizations.

When we talk about product management, the first thing that comes to mind is the cult of the user. This is almost the sole purpose of the discipline, the norm that advocates that through a deep understanding of users’ needs, we will reach the nirvana of impact. We have all been trained on the importance of placing the user at the center of product design, and this remains crucial.

However, through my 15 years of practice in the field, most of the time in environments where digital products served business interests outside of digital (in services and even in industry), I have learned to develop a slightly different perspective. I have observed that the success of a product does not solely rely on its adoption by users but also on the teams’ ability to make it financially and operationally relevant for the business. This relevance translates both into a strong contribution of the product to the economic development of the company and into its perfectly adjusted integration within the operational infrastructure that supports that same company.

I am very pleased to see that, for several months now — I would say this trend has intensified throughout 2023 — more and more spokespersons for the discipline are engaging in this direction that places business at the center. This is a good thing and will certainly help to reinforce a more concrete and sharp approach to product management in the coming months and years.

I would like to share here some of my deepest convictions, the biases that guide most of my daily decisions in this product role, and which aim, in my opinion, to provide a framework to better align the discipline with today’s economic realities.

Return to a More Pragmatic Future

Before diving into the core of the subject, let’s take a look at history.

I sincerely believe that we are witnessing a major turning point, marking the end of what we might call the Golden Age of digital. This golden age began 30 years ago: the advent of the internet in the 2000s (this paragraph might seem quite “boomer”) was characterized by the emergence of revolutionary digital products that radically transformed our lives and opened the door to a multitude of new possibilities. These innovations redefined our social interactions, much like Facebook, and altered our working methods through newer tools like Notion. The main objective was to create exceptional and enriching user experiences. Focused on usage, we had a mantra: “change the world.”

We have all become accustomed to analyzing these products through the lens of aesthetics and experience. What strikes me the most is that we even developed galleries of sorts to showcase them, such as Product Hunt, which has catalyzed this cult, sometimes bordering on idolatry. We have become used to evaluating these products based on “beauty” rather than on the sustainability of their usage.

That said, the era of easy money has come to an end, forcing us to come back down to Earth. We have had to acknowledge that the interest we developed for these digital “works of art” must be reassessed and that we certainly need to modify our judgment criteria by incorporating a different measure of reliability, based not only on user experience but also on the notion of economic coherence. This awareness has reminded everyone of the importance of financial and operational reliability of a product, beyond its design and the experience it offers — aspects that we had tended to forget.

Therefore, I interpret this evolution as the beginning of an era where our sense of product becomes more pragmatic. The focus is now on seeking sustainability and profitability, in a context where products must not only generate profits but also integrate effectively into the operational processes of the organization to which they belong.

Successfully Integrating the Product within Its Economic and Operational Stack Supports Its Long-Term Success and Sustainability

Over the years, one of the most valuable lessons I have learned is that the success of a product or feature largely depends on the effectiveness of its integration within the professional ecosystem that supports the core business of its company.

I often argue that an imperfect product, optimally deployed to its users and its business organization (think Service Blueprint), can find its way to success through adjustments and changes in direction. It will eventually be adopted and function well. Conversely, a technically perfect product that is poorly integrated with its target audience and its economic and operational ecosystem is doomed to fail. It risks sinking into obscurity, as irretrievable as if it had been entrusted to the depths of the ocean guarded by Davy Jones. This is true, and I have experienced it several times.

Beyond this metaphor, the essence of my argument is that precisely defining how a product aligns with the functions supporting the company’s core activity is just as crucial as aspects related to user experience and technical feasibility. By valuing and understanding the roles of those who facilitate the core business, we ensure not only better reception of the product but also its relevance and long-term viability.

To Successfully Achieve Business Integration, We Must Return to the Foundations of Viability, Desirability, and Feasibility

When practicing product management or even just showing interest in it, the importance of considering the product through the lenses of viability, desirability (user experience), and feasibility always emerges. These three pillars, often represented in a diagram intersecting business, engineering, and user experience, serve as the foundation of the discipline. By delving into the application of these concepts, we find powerful levers that promote the integration of core business into product strategy.

The viability of a product refers to its ability to exist and thrive in its market. This includes not only elements of functional viability; I often use the example of a bicycle with square wheels, which is definitively “functionally” unviable, but also economic viability.

This seems obvious: a product must generate a significant return on investment, essential for supporting the company’s economy. However, this is not always the case. Evaluating the viability of a product involves examining its capacity to contribute to the financial health of the company. This requires a data-driven approach to project the return on investment and determine how the product will support the company in the long term.

I believe that too often, we focus on the visible part of the iceberg. We evaluate short-term consequences, seeking immediate and rapid visible results, because that is how we have all been trained. However, ensuring the product’s viability in business terms should push us to look further. We must guarantee not only that the product will generate results, whether through profit or savings, but also that it will foster a kind of virtuous cycle in the longer term.

Feasibility, on the other hand, should not be limited to the technical aspects of product development. In my view, a product can only be considered feasible if it can be built and effectively integrated into its operational ecosystem. This encompasses addressing technical challenges alongside regulatory considerations and operational constraints.

I experienced this firsthand while working on the development of remote check-in solutions in a previous experience. We aimed to create a journey allowing hotel guests to check in through an exclusively digital interface. In some countries, this required accounting for steps to verify identity documents—this was a prerequisite that necessitated envisioning a biometric process, including legal document scanning and facial recognition. Such functionality had to be technically viable, but it also needed to comply with local legislation. Considering these constraints was critical in designing the product and all its features.

Ultimately, it is the product manager’s role to identify the digital levers that will foster the development and sustainability of the business, and to do so with the necessary perspective that will enable long-term functional and, most importantly, economic viability. They must also have a deep understanding of the organization’s structure, operational processes, and all associated roles to ensure there are no obstacles at the time of deployment. To achieve this, they need the necessary skills, which I believe lie in their ability to understand and engage with business issues that go beyond the technological and digital dimensions central to their role. I genuinely believe that only “T-Shaped” profiles, combining deep product expertise with a broader skill set, can address these needs, and that the best candidates will be those who, by virtue of their professional journeys, possess experiences outside the realm of product management, bringing them a certain richness and a broader perspective.

The four superpowers that product teams must possess to succeed

Beyond the soft skills I mentioned earlier, I outline four areas where every product manager and product team should excel—this is, in my view, an essential prerequisite for thriving in a business-centric environment. I have drawn upon discussions over the past few months with several dozen leaders of product teams, mostly within complex organizations. They almost unanimously emphasized that their teams’ success in developing effective features aligned with business challenges relies on four essential factors: governance, adaptability, productivity, and strategic data utilization.

Governance brings the idea that one of the major challenges lies in the team’s ability to structure and define processes for interaction with the business units. Within most organizations, particularly as they grow larger and more complex, product managers often bear the significant responsibility of engaging a wide range of internal stakeholders, and these interlocutors are often difficult to satisfy. Navigating these demands, especially when they come from a key user with fixed ideas, can feel like a true ordeal. In this context, establishing a robust governance framework becomes essential, even critical, for ensuring the success of product teams. This framework involves setting well-defined prioritization rules and aligning the objectives of all stakeholders, whether formalized by OKRs or not. This approach is fundamental for effectively navigating such a complex environment.

When I mention adaptability, I refer to the team’s ability to respond accurately and precisely to the often abrupt changes in its environment. These changes can include the replacement of a leader that entails a new global strategy, the establishment of a new structure, or another strategic pivot. Such circumstances can exert considerable pressure on product teams, sometimes forcing them to completely rethink their approach to align with these new parameters. Imagine a senior executive announcing that the absolute priority for the next six months is the deployment of a strategic marketing campaign supporting an innovation in artificial intelligence—everything stops, and attention is focused solely on this goal. In response, two reactions are possible: succumbing to panic and halting all ongoing activities to comply with this request; or, more strategically, stepping back, adjusting the roadmap, reallocating roles and responsibilities to achieve the desired objective while preserving as much as possible the other priorities. It is essential to understand that success greatly depends on this ability to adopt the second approach.

Productivity should be a team mantra that fosters the rapid delivery of results. This implies that the team is able to quickly respond to business demands while calmly working on its product plan and urgently addressing the imperatives imposed by the business. The team must be capable of maintaining both its level of quality and its mental well-being, while also developing a model that allows it to frequently launch impactful (and visible—because no one ever understands “why developments take so long”) features. In my opinion, productivity is a pillar of excellence that must be the team’s responsibility—it is the team that must self-manage and challenge itself in this regard.

Mastering data is also an essential element, as this mastery should allow for the development of a perfect balance between intuition, which guides the team’s deepest convictions, and the need to provide irrefutable objectivity in decision-making. A deep understanding and proper utilization of data provide the necessary objectivity at every stage of the product life cycle, from user research and insights analysis to idea prioritization and performance monitoring. This data expertise is crucial for refining the team’s approach, supporting its arguments, and continuously optimizing the product based on an ever-increasing confidence in the impact that will be delivered.

These four pillars structure an approach that promotes both the measurement and the method of guiding a team of product managers toward a certain level of excellence, in both vast and variable business contexts. This framework can, in fact, apply to all organizations seeking to better integrate their digital product developments with the business, far beyond large corporations, regardless of their size and industry.

Let us remember that nothing is ever guaranteed. I sincerely believe that the elements I present are part of a framework that can enable a product team to succeed with a greater impact on the business. Whether it is the “T-shaped” soft skills of product managers or the team’s ability to properly address governance, adaptability, productivity, and data mastery—everything remains a matter of awareness and the willingness to progress. So, are you ready to take on the challenge?