{"id":771,"date":"2018-07-02T05:46:22","date_gmt":"2018-07-02T02:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kusuaks7\/?p=376"},"modified":"2025-11-26T13:40:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T13:40:29","slug":"is-product-management-more-art-than-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/consumer-tech\/is-product-management-more-art-than-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Product Management More Art Than Science?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tReady to learn Marketing & Customer Analytics Training?\u00a0Browse courses<\/a>\u00a0like\u00a0 Increase Cross Selling and Upselling of Products and Services<\/a> developed by industry thought leaders and Experfy in Harvard Innovation Lab.<\/em><\/strong>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDoes being customer-focused mean that product usage information is the most critical factor in driving feature\/enhancement prioritization. A\u00a0recent LinkedIn post<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Gibson Biddle<\/a>\u00a0reconfirmed my long-held belief that good product management is as much art as science.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFrom a quantitative perspective, it is really exciting to see some great new products (such as\u00a0Pendo.io<\/a>,\u00a0Mixpanel<\/a>\u00a0just to name a few) that enable a better understanding of user behavior (customer experience) within applications.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBut does product usage information give you the insight you need to make all your critical decisions?\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\nAnyone who has worked with me over the last 30 years has heard me say that poorly designed features that don’t get used are not (necessarily) good indicators of customer need or value.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOn the qualitative side, I have also been known to say that “customers are never right<\/a>” when they ask for feature changes. This means that customers only know what they know, but not what is possible. One (of the many) job\u00a0of a good product management is to work with the customer to uncover new ways to solve their problems. Start by asking “why” – why is it important; why does it impact their business or process; why will it change their behavior; why will it increase user engagement; why it will it impact their metrics for success, etc. –\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRecently,\u00a0Roger Attick<\/a>\u00a0shared a great article from\u00a0The Atlantic<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Derek Thompson<\/a>\u00a0about\u00a0Google-X<\/a>. The following passage, based on the author’s idea for creating floating houses on oceans, sums up the critical importance of asking why.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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“I\u2019d expected the team at X to sketch some floating houses on a whiteboard, or discuss ways to connect an ocean suburb to a city center, or just inform me that the idea was terrible. I was wrong. The table never once mentioned the words\u00a0\u00a0floating<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0\u00a0ocean<\/em>. My pitch merely inspired an inquiry into the purpose of housing and the shortfalls of U.S. infrastructure…They start with the hard work of finding the right questions.<\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAt least in the B2B software world, I also don’t agree with the infamous quote attributed to Steve Jobs — “Customers don\u2019t know what they want<\/a>“.\u00a0 Customers understand their businesses better than any software provider. However, it is impossible, IMHO, to create great products and services that delight and engage users, and deliver valuable customer outcomes in a vacuum.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSo what does this mean?\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIt means that as a product manager, you need to capture, understand, interpret and analyze a range of qualitative and quantitative inputs to arrive at the ideal product decisions including:\n
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  1. The competitive landscape<\/strong>\u00a0(and substitutes if you think you don’t have competitors and most importantly how does this impact future sales opportunities)<\/li>\n \t
  2. Direct Customer feedback<\/strong>\u00a0(including in application messages, support calls, feedback from sales, customer meetings, etc.)<\/li>\n \t
  3. Indirect Customer Feedback<\/strong>\u00a0(what they say about you on social channels)<\/li>\n \t
  4. Product and service usage and analytics\u00a0<\/strong>(as mentioned above)<\/li>\n \t
  5. Qualitative market research<\/strong>\u00a0(one-on-one interviews, focus groups, etc.)<\/li>\n \t
  6. Quantitative market research<\/strong>\u00a0(including stated and derived importance\/value of features versus delivered satisfaction of such features)<\/li>\n \t
  7. Customer Value\u00a0<\/strong>(how much does the customer value the feature,\u00a0will it make them a customer for life<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0Bob London’s favorite question<\/a>, and the rest of the why questions from above)<\/li>\n \t
  8. Company Value<\/strong>\u00a0(what value does it bring to your company and how does this align with the broader company goals – new revenue, incremental revenue, user engagement, user retention, etc.)<\/li>\n \t
  9. Risk and Scale<\/strong>\u00a0(how risky is the development effort and how much resource will it require)<\/li>\n \t
  10. Vision, Intuition, and Experience\u00a0<\/strong>(enough said)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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    \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhile this is likely not an exhaustive list, it’s clear there is no one single source of “truth” exists when making product decisions. Some inputs are definitely more quantitative than others, but many also need a dialogue with customers as well as judgment calls, best guesses, and interpretations.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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    \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPutting all these inputs into a single, uniform funnel or process is one of the hardest and often the most controversial activities inside a software company. I have personally not used all the techniques that\u00a0Daniel Zacarias<\/a>\u00a0outlines in his recent post in\u00a0Folding Burritos<\/a>. It is also clear from the recent survey results in\u00a0Mind The Product<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Kate Bennet<\/a>\u00a0that there is no standard approach or single tool that meets everyone’s needs.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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    \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\nSo what’s the answer? Is product management more art than science? I guess the debate continues. What do you think?\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As a product manager, you need to capture, understand, interpret and analyze a range of qualitative and quantitative inputs to arrive at the ideal product decisions. There is no one single source of “truth” exists when making product decisions. Some inputs are definitely more quantitative than others, but many also need a dialogue with customers as well as judgment calls, best guesses, and interpretations. There is no standard approach or single tool that meets everyone’s needs. So what’s the answer? Is product management more art than science?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":175,"featured_media":4105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[115],"ppma_author":[1706],"class_list":["post-771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-consumer-tech","tag-marketing-and-customer-analytics"],"authors":[{"term_id":1706,"user_id":175,"is_guest":0,"slug":"michael-riemer","display_name":"Michael Riemer","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"Riemer","first_name":"Michael","job_title":"","description":"Michael Riemer is Principal \/ Advisor (Enterprise IoT, Insur\/Fin-Tech, MarTech, MedTech at ABJJ Consulting.  He has more than 30 years of building companies, teams, products, programs and relationships that deliver valuable customer outcomes.  He is a regularly requested speaker, author, and industry authority on Industrial IoT and Digital Transformation."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38153,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions\/38153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}