Managing Product
The importance of Product Management
Management is one of the most important catalysts for growth (of any kind).
Building a product is fun. From the ideation to the design, testing internally and externally; seeing an idea come to life truly is a wholesome experience. However, there’s a stark difference between product development and product management.
People tend to spend a lot of time on the development, while neglecting management. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve heard “I want to build x! I need developers. I’ll build it and then just market it”; And every time I ask “Do you have a Product Manager?”, the answer is “No”.
Too many people spend ridiculous amounts of time and money building a product they have no management plan for. Building a product is only the first phase, while managing it is the real deal. Management covers a myriad of areas, such as metrics & analytics, KPIs, marketing, iterating on feedback, and so much more.
Proper management will tremendously broaden the lifespan of your product. For example, there are ample products being built at large tech companies everyday; the company might have an off-site team working on this product, but the company doesn’t spend any resources on the product (maybe only a tiny initial budget). However, when the product begins to show promise, the company then invests in the management of the product. A lot of now-popular products, like WeChat, were built this way.
You’d notice, some people do it the other way around, they spend a lot of resources on the building, then very little on management, that’s one of the reasons really great products die.
Focus on management. Developing/Building the product is good, yes, but have a proper plan for management. You know who’s going to build the product, but you also need to figure who’s going to manage it.
