Can product management be standardized?

7/16/2012

As one of the organizers of product camp Boston last month, I was pleased to see so many attendees. We had nearly 40 sessions ranging from marketing to product management to running a start up.

With so many takes and aspects of product management, it got me thinking: Can product management ever be standardized?

Those of you familiar with PMI probably heard of the PMP certification. This is an industry wide initiative that certifies project managers and is widely accepted. The PMP is constantly evolving and is updated by the project management community.

However, when it comes to product management and how it is implemented, no standard applies. Each company has its own definition of what product management is, making it hard to standardize this profession. Several for-profit organizations offer training and certifications for their Body of Knowledge (BOK) and methodologies, yet there is no accepted standard across all industries.

The question is whether there can be a one size fits all standard. Can a company in Hi-Tech run product management the same way a Bio-Tech company does or a financial institution? Furthermore, are companies willing to revisit how they run product management and invest in training and certifying their product managers?

To achieve a recognized standard there needs to be a clear (and hopefully non-profit) leader in the market that, through working closely with existing for-profit organizations, will come up with one certification that all groups support.

6 Comments

Dinos Gonatas link

7/17/2012 11:43:39 pm

This is an interesting comment. On one hand, if it can be standardized, does that mean there is no creativity in it? Ie. turning it into something like lean manufacturing or six sigma where the goal is to use a well-defined methodology so a person who has no ability other than to follow procedure can do it without screwing up.

It seems that product management roles depend greatly on the environment, market and product line so there's no one-size fits all approach. You could be working as an internally-focused product manager in a OEM market with only a couple customers. There may not even be a sales force so much as managers who respond to RFP's. There the role is to take the customers' directions about what they want and mostly be project managing engineering teams. Or you could work on a diverse product line with a diverse market and have to do a lot of segmentation to figure out customer needs. The market could be rapidly changing and require a ton of agility to figure out how to succeed... or slowly evolving, so focused on small details and secondary product features that confer competitive advantage.

To the extent that product management is a creative function, ie. is charged with coming up with new things, product ideas and business direction, it merges with business development - which practically by definition can not be standardized.

Gabriel Steinhardt link

7/17/2012 11:48:47 pm

>>>>>>The question is whether there can be a one size fits all standard.
>>>>>>Can a company in Hi-Tech run product management the same way
>>>>>> a Bio-Tech company does or a financial institution?

The principles of product management are universal and apply similarly to all types of products and industries. Product management principles can be used in the very same manner to manage consumer goods, B2B goods, non-tangible services, etc'.

The prevailing lack of understanding across industries to what is product management, how it is defined, the processes and tasks governing it, the roles within the domain; have created a slew interpretations and accordingly many variations on how product management is applied.

>>>>>>Furthermore, are companies willing to revisit how they run product management
>>>>>>and invest in training and certifying their product managers?

Companies are willing to make changes and investments only if they realize that the way they are currently running their business or managing their products is inefficient and that the cost and risk of stagnation is higher than the inherent cost and risk of making a change.

>>>>>>To achieve a recognized standard there needs to be a clear (and hopefully non-profit)
>>>>>>leader in the market that, through working closely with existing for-profit organizations,
>>>>>>will come up with one certification that all groups support.

Product management is mature but still very much misunderstood. It is unlikely that a recognized standard will emerge from a non-profit organization, and this is due to the immense effort and time required to build a true body of knowledge in product management.

A consistent, holistic and practical body of knowledge in product management, which will become a recognized standard to be adopted by companies, is presently only in the realm of for-profit companies.

Hakan Kilic link

7/20/2012 12:18:41 am

While I don't think the process and specific tasks will be the same at every organization, I do believe that there should a set of standard responsibilities that a product team should. Splitting this between product owners, product managers and product marketers (and many other titles) might be fine due to seniority, complexity or organizational needs, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be a set of standard activities.

Now to one of the above mentioned points, innovation can occur both in the "process" of product management, and in the "products" a product manager owns. Just like lean manufacturing was an innovative process improvement. The only problem is that the balance of benefit between adopting standardized processes or trying something completely new is still not well understood by most people.

I can be the best product manager with completely radical ideas that could be ground breaking in the field. But if my engineering, marketing, sales and executive teams have never experienced it, don't know how to interact with it, and frankly cannot be transferred to the *next* product management hire, then you run the risk of very broken processes, which end up destroying product innovation, time to market, collaboration, etc.. etc...

Every product manager out there, should, as an example, understand what a win/loss interview is. They may choose not to do it, or call it be a different name (which standardization would help with), but having a common Body of Knowledge is very useful to talk the same talk, and then choose which parts of it make the most sense for you and your business.

Janna Bastow link

7/28/2012 06:50:16 am

While product management across different companies and industries may begin to find a common thread, I don't think it will ever become standardised in the way it has for Project Management (referring to the PMI standards).

A project can be simplified, no matter the industry, to the balance of time, scope and cost. Project management focus, for the most part, is on delivery... in my experience with my PMI studies, application area considerations are just the footnotes.

In product management, though, application area - the understanding of the product itself, is massively important. It's the underlying value that the product manager brings! A bio-tech product manager would be lost in a high-tech product company, and vice-versa. So while some of the processes can be standardised and simplified, I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution.

That said, I do believe product management can be made more accessible.

project management certification link

8/18/2013 09:46:26 pm

Project management training is the part of learning about the hole set of process in project management training process.

Free Stock Tips on Mobile link

9/9/2014 08:07:01 pm

No it can be as this is a learning process and everyone needs to learn according to the project and services so as to change it so its tuff for the management to gain in standardized module.

Can product management be standardized?

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