Trends in Product Management Part 2
What's changed in the past 6 months?
It is time for the mid-year evaluation of product management trends! What has changed since early this year?
Original article: Trends in Product Management January 2024
Recap of the 6 product management trends
Blurring of Product Management and Product Marketing
Product Managers need to know how their products are sold
Product Managers becoming general managers
Product Managers are key to transformation projects
Ethics questions land with Product Managers
Merging of Product Management and technology
Let's dig into what has happened with each trend.
Trend 1: Blurring of product management and product marketing
Recent News:
Prospective customers do research through social media before making a purchase decision. This pushes product managers and product marketers to work together to reach prospects.
Recent layoffs in high tech put favor on generalist product managers. With fewer product managers and marketers, a product manager who can analyze competitors, define the value proposition, and create marketing strategies are valuable people in the organization.
Trend Status: moving in this direction
Trend 2: Product managers need to know how their products are sold
Recent News:
Product-led growth (PLG) is cooling off a bit and turning into growth product management
The new realization that many products are best suited to direct sales
Both PLG products and Sales-Led products need product managers to understand product monetization
Central commercial teams, IT teams, and Product Ops are emerging to address product sales at scale
Trend Status: Too early to tell
Trend 3: Product management is a superpower to transformation projects
Recent News:
There is a rise in platform engineering along with DevOps. These teams look to product managers to drive investments.
There are conflicting viewpoints about the role of product management for internal transformation projects.
Emerging dissatisfaction with big transformation projects in general.
Trend Status: no movement
Trend 4: Product managers are becoming general managers
Recent News:
Organizations are on the hunt for cost reductions. Product managers are the leading force for improving P&L.
Many products are under heavy scrutiny for continued investments. Product managers now work closely with finance and other stakeholders to improve their product’s financial health.
Description of a new type of product manager that single-handedly functions as a team. For example: Full-stack Product Manager and Super IC Product Manager.
Trend status: Big movement
Trend 5: Ethics land on the product manager’s desk
Recent News:
Product managers must understand AI concepts and determine the risk to privacy, security, and ethics of AI embedded in their products.
New emphasis on data privacy and security from security breaches and compliance requirements.
There is an increasing need for product managers to do risk management in support of ethical considerations.
Trend Status: Surprising movement from AI
Trend 6: Merging of Product and Technology
Recent News:
New role emerging: Chief Product & Technology Officer (CPTO) as a combined Chief Product Officer (CPO) and Chief Technology Officer (CTO). There are 2000 CPTO job postings on LinkedIn compared to CPO at 1000 job postings and CTO at 500 job postings.
The combination of product and technology is becoming valuable with the speed of technology innovation.
Product managers must learn to use new technologies such as AI to keep their innovative edge.
Trend Status: Continuing
Conclusion - Product Management is a Dynamic Role
Product managers are continuing to adapt to new ways of doing work. AI and role consolidation are driving many of the changes in product managers' roles.
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Great recap, even though the market is "less worse" than a few month ago, companies still focus on limiting costs and want PMs with multiple skills beyond Product Management as you mention with focus from what I see on :
- Marketing and GTM
- Business/Sales acumen
- Technical skills
A growing trend that I've seen in job offers and recruiting processes - that goes even beyond the ethical concerns - is that many companies "require" PMs to have advanced knowledge in AI :
- use AI daily and master the gen AI tools
- have a mindset and good understanding to build AI products/features
Interesting trends!
But how do we know which trends are relevant for the roles we want?