Is your Product leaving money on the table? The answer depends on “who” is driving your product.

If Engineers are driving your product, it becomes a highly customized product. Services companies are born out of this approach. This gets the lowest profit margins for your products.

If Architects are driving your product, it becomes a highly configurable product. Many enterprise-focussed companies are operating this way. This results in lower profit margin for your products.

If Product Managers are driving your product, then this will maximize the profits for you, as most of the intended functionality will be available out-of-the-box.

As an analogy, think about the CRM application and how it has evolved.

Traditionally, organizations were getting this built for themselves. As a result, many services companies flourished building this for their clients. A little later, Oracle/SAP started building these applications. These applications contained a lot of modules, that had to be integrated during deployment. Needless to say, this was driven by Architects at these companies. As a result, this deployment was complex and needed a lot of manpower,  eating the profit margins for these companies in these products. Later on, Salesforce came into the market with a product-driven approach.  Look at where it has gone with its out-of-the-box product capabilities.

Examples of this sort abound in every company. We just need to look carefully to understand.

How to identify who is driving your Product?

When the requirements of the Product are discussed, observe who leads the requirements related discussion. Is it your Product Manager, the Architect or the lead Engineer who has the final say? Who is the final go-to person in case there are conflicts between these three critical team members on how certain functionality is to be implemented?

I have personally seen cases, where the Product Manager (PdM) was not confident about certain things in the newer architecture (a cloud-native architecture) and deferred the decision to the Architect. Ideally, the PdM should have taken ownership and performed the research to guide the team and the product.

Can a driver change in the course of product development?

It does not take long for change to happen, even when the Product manager might be leading it today. Reasons may include a newer technology (like the example above) or changes in the Product Management team. The new Product Manager may rely on the expertise of the existing team and leverage it more without intending to do so.

What is the remedy?

The Management team is the key here. The Software Development Manager and the Manager of the Product Management team are the ones to have a handshake about who will drive the Product. Any exceptions that happen should be pointed out quickly to these two stakeholders. Any changes in any of these teams (ex. Development lead, Architect, Product Manager or Product Owner) should be carefully planned and a close watch should be kept on how the team is dealing within, to ensure that the right person (the Product Manager) is driving the product.

Who is driving your Product? Are you able to spot the changes happening? And more importantly, how much is it costing your company?