The engineers can create software products, right? They can do the coding and to make the product look aesthetic they can take the help of your designers, and a great product can be easily created. So why is there so much noise about product management? It is just a superfluous discipline.
Many developers and companies think like this. They say, "There is no need for a product manager, just build the product and customers will start lining up". Or more probable is that engineers don't think about customers at all.
But over the years it is shown that though, the product can be built by engineers/ developers and designers. But there is just one small problem with this … the product “will not sell or get adopted” and hence there is no revenue, and no business.
Yes as a hobby technical project you can keep on building without actually being able to sell and make money out of it. But if you want to run your project like a business, then you better start by understanding the market needs and finding gaps to fulfill.
Yes as a hobby technical project you can keep on building without actually being able to sell and make money out of it. But if you want to run your project like a business, then you better start by understanding the market needs and finding gaps to fulfill.
We also know that most products fail, so there must be a reason(s)for it. Most products of even bigger companies fail. Go to killedbygoogle.com and see how many products of a big company like Google with all the resources and data and information fails. Spare a thought about the not-so-big, startups.
So if you are looking to create products for businesses, such as commercial entities then product management is a must.
Note that It’s not necessary that your team should have a person as a dedicated “Product manager” but it's imperative that someone plays that role. Mostly it's the founder who plays this.
Product management is so important that it is a matter of success or failure. We will talk more about this.
This is a series of blog posts on product management. The next post will be posted soon. Stay tuned.
Learn21 conducts an online Boot Camp for web development. If interested you can check the details here.