Trends in Product Management
Kicking off the new year with predictions
It’s the time of the year to comment on trends in product management. Product management's role has changed and stayed the same over the years. What trends are coming for product managers?
Trend 1: Blurring of product management and product marketing
More prospective customers are researching products through social media before talking to sales or making a purchase decision. Freeware with price tiering makes pricing a key part of each product. The product markets itself.
This means product management and product marketing work together constantly.
Trend 2: Product managers need to know how their products are sold
With the emergence of product-led growth (PLG) and increasing focus on channel-led sales, products are sold to customers in many new ways. While salespeople can provide the most concentrated view of customers to product managers, often products are sold outside of traditional direct sales.
This means product managers need to understand sales channels, sales compensation and sales friction.
Trend 3: Product management is a superpower for transformation projects
Organizations are finding efficiencies of scale from transformation projects.
Re-architecting for Cloud and Platform Engineering are examples of transformation projects that need product managers as internal change agents. Emerging technologies such as AI/ML, cybersecurity, and blockchain are other drivers for transformation projects.
This means product managers who bring together resources and deliver on ambiguous projects are key to transformation.
Trend 4: Product managers are becoming general managers
Product managers are expected to track the return on investments. Product managers are accountable for the P&L of their products. The product role is becoming a horizontal role that leads to a matrix of dependencies that is bigger than the sum of the parts. Communication with stakeholders and the product team is integral to being a successful general manager of the product team.
This means product managers who can empathize with multiple product team roles can lead their teams to delivery success.
Trend 5: Ethics land on the product manager's desk
The increasing complexity of security, privacy, accessibility, and sustainability needs caring product managers to sort out. Often these responsibilities are shared with customers. Successful product managers take charge of risk assessment of ethical issues and escalate when necessary to their stakeholders. Due to the complexity and rapid technology change, product managers have the best knowledge to head off issues.
Product managers need to take the initiative to keep their products from brand damage and other ethical issues.
Trend 6: Merging of Product and Technology
Rapidly evolving technology needs business insight coupled with systems thinking. Technical domain knowledge blended with financial acumen can make a difference in new product categories. Rapid innovation needs close ties between product and technology. The CPO and CTO roles are sometimes combined to speed up innovation.
Versatile product managers who understand design, systems, and technology can speak with one voice to engineering.
Conclusion - Product Management continues to evolve!
How will these 6 trends play out in the year ahead? The emerging technology of AI, PLG, Cloud, and more certainly influences these trends. Time will tell if product management will continue on these trends.
The trends discussed in this week’s newsletter are based on what I’m seeing in my product management job and in speaking to other product managers. My opinions were also influenced by the many newsletters I read. Some of the best predictions for the year ahead in product management are:
Carlos González De Villaumbrosia https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-of-product-by-product-school-ceo-founder/id1219400787?i=1000638325090
Marty Cagan https://www.svpg.com/product-predictions-2024/
Sid Saladi https://sidsaladi.substack.com/p/week-72-top-9-product-management
Mind the product https://www.mindtheproduct.com/what-does-2024-hold-for-product-managers/
Leah Tharin https://www.leahtharin.com/p/the-upcoming-2024-bloodbath-in-saas
Aatir Abdul Rauf https://aatir.substack.com/p/2024-predictions-for-product-management
Excellent list, Amy! I’d like to add Product Ops. I’ve been seeing a real trend there recently.
I've personally experienced Trend #1 and #5 over the past 6 months. Product marketing at our company has moved from under commercialization to product and we've updated almost every process to better improve the PM-PMM relationship. I've additionally been quite involved with AI Governance and can see the benefits of PMs focusing more on ethics broadly--simply relegating that to security, privacy, and/or legal dismisses an opportunity for product managers to have meaningful impacts beyond the monetary. Great list of predictions!