Key challenges in product management in India

1. Given that product management is a relatively new discipline for many organizations in
India, uncertainties exist in its concept as well as implementation. The fundamental
question remains: What is the core deliverable and value that product management
should bring to any company?
Much of the confusion surrounding product management and its practice is clarified if
we first understand that all activities in any technology product firm fall into two
spaces: the problem space and the solution space.
What problems exist in the market, which of these are appropriate for the company to
solve and why – these belong to the problem space. The solution space, on the other
hand, addresses the challenge of ‘How’ to solve the chosen problems. The role of
Product Management lies squarely in the problem space and that is where its core
deliverables emerge.
To better understand the maturity of the product management function in India and the
challenges faced in practice, we at Confianzys spoke to product management
practitioners in a number of companies – small and large, multinational and regional
companies and Executive as well as managerial level employees. Further, the many
interventions in this space that we have been involved with have contributed to our
learning of the on‐ground challenges that companies face.
This thought paper discusses those challenges and likely evolution of the product
management function as the value it brings to the table gets more clearly recognized.
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PRODUCT MANAGEMENT IN INDIA – FOUR KEY CHALLENGES
A THOUGHT PAPER BY THE CONFIANZYS CONSULTING GROUP
TWO SPACES: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS
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2. Some of the key challenges that practitioners face in their work are highlighted below.
Many of these have direct implications on the value that companies bring to their
customers, as we will see.
Derailment into Solutions: One of the key challenges that we came across in this study
and in our own work, is the mobilizing of product managers’ time and effort into the
solutions space. In fact, some stated that 70% of their time went into “cobbling together
solutions” or “project management”.
The challenge with this ‘all hands on deck’ approach was highlighted by one of our
respondents who felt that it prevented product managers from really looking at the
problems that exist in the market. Further, given that many of the ‘obvious’ customer
problems in any market are already being addressed, product managers need to look
more closely to identify niches that their companies can own.
Product managers whose time is occupied with solution development lack the time to
identify and evaluate such problems and markets. This is a big opportunity loss for
companies and of course, has a direct impact on their innovation and differentiation
efforts. Moreover, a product manager whose efforts are directed elsewhere may even
miss customer problems that are quite evident.
A side effect of the derailment into solutions was that product managers also got called
upon to deal with post‐deployment issues which the engineering and support teams
would be better qualified to deal with.
Defining market requirements: A second challenge that product management
practitioners faced was the absence of a process or reliable framework to define market
requirements. In some cases, while the role of the product manager was theoretically
defined as bridging corporate strategy and business strategy to product strategy, in
practice, it was still being cobbled together.
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FOUR KEY CHALLENGES IN PRACTICE
Company Confidential: Confianzys Consulting Pvt. Ltd November 2010
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3. Especially in smaller companies or companies that were just moving out of the start‐up
phase, some product managers felt that they did not have the skills needed to define
market requirements in an actionable manner, especially when it came to
understanding buyer needs as against user needs. In some cases, it was felt that
products were put together based on ‘gut feel’ and market requirements worked in post
facto, since customer visits and advocacy were rarely included at the product ideation
stage. While some felt that the exigencies of the situation demanded such action, clearly,
there was also some unease that as the company grew larger, such trial and error
methods could prove risky.
Another side effect mentioned was that without a clear understanding of market
requirements, teams sometimes got involved in a ‘feature overload’ mode and focused
on sales‐driven Customer requirements, where the sole aim of development teams was
to maximize the number of features at a given cost.
Product management for global products: Especially in the high‐tech product
industry in India, there are fewer and fewer barriers to globalization, and many
companies desire to scale up globally. In this context, many product managers
understood clearly that their role was to understand a dynamic, global market and
interpret it for the benefit of others in the company.
However, product managers in start‐ups felt that they were inadequately prepared to
understand a large and varied global market. For those in larger companies, the inter‐personal
dynamics involved in aligning with product management and other teams
Interestingly, transitioning between product planning and product marketing roles was
not felt to be as big a challenge, though, product marketing to some did pose a problem
when on a global scale.
Low CEO Mindspace for Product Management: One other factor mentioned was that
Product Management was not yet seen as a critical/distinct function by the CEO and
other top management. This was especially a challenge in companies that had grown
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across locations was a bigger factor.
Company Confidential: Confianzys Consulting Pvt. Ltd November 2010
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4. from a start‐up mode and where the founding team still ran the business. In such
companies, perhaps the aversion to creating a clear space for product management
stems from founders’ inability to delegate such roles to others. This creates a situation
where the product management function exists in theory, but the role is not defined
strategically – instead, Founders/CXOs perform the role in an ad hoc manner.
For the organization, this has implications in terms of opportunity identification being
limited to the small founding group. It is also possible that as the Founder‐CEO gets
involved in many other issues, his or her involvement with customers reduces;
empowering the product management team and giving them a strategic role is
important for the company to stay market‐centric.
This also led to concerns on the lack of a clear career path for product management
practitioners and doubts as to whether PMs were seen as future corporate leaders.
Other challenges revolved around the difficulties in a nodal role requiring successful
interaction/negotiation with many different teams.
While some of the issues faced by product managers in India stemmed from their
working in start‐up mode companies, clearly, these issues are not restricted to start‐ups.
The fewer resources that smaller companies have only magnify problems faced by
Going forward, role definition, market‐driven approach and product management
training are the key initiatives that we see the industry needing.
Role definition for product management while clear enough in theory is difficult to
implement. Many smaller companies especially face a shortage of resources and few
employees can avoid multi‐tasking. However, as companies move out of the early start‐up
stage, it is important for such role definition to begin. In the early stages, the
founding team or engineering/development team may have been responsible for
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PRODUCT MANAGEMENT IN INDIA: LOOKING FORWARD
most players in the industry.
Company Confidential: Confianzys Consulting Pvt. Ltd November 2010
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5. product planning. Going forward, it is essential to allocate planning responsibilities to at
least one person, who can focus on understanding market and customer requirements.
In larger companies, where resource availability is better, it is senior management’s
responsibility to ensure that product managers do not end up defining solutions and
ignoring problems. This awareness is now already present in some of the companies we
have interacted with.
Adopting a market‐centric approach is even tougher because it goes right to the heart of
company culture. A company that has begun with a technology‐driven culture (“We
make the best products, we know customers will buy them) requires a commitment from
top management to overhaul this mode of thinking. There is enough evidence to show
that a market‐centric approach gives companies a better chance of getting customer
buy‐in; in our view, however, despite the evidence, it will take some time in India for
technology product company leaders and owners to move away from the tech‐driven
approach.
Finally, the issue of training for product management professionals has already been
acknowledged by leaders, and many of the industry leaders we interact with have begun
taking steps to narrow the skill gap.
In this scenario, while challenges abound, we can summarize that Indian industry is in a
nascent but hopeful stage as far as the maturity of the product management function is
concerned. The next 5 years, according to us, is going to be an exciting time for the
industry – with more products emerging from the market and greater interest among
technology professionals in the discipline, we can expect quite a different outlook post
this period.
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Company Confidential: Confianzys Consulting Pvt. Ltd November 2010
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6. About Confianzys Consulting:
Confianzys Consulting is a first‐of‐its‐kind consulting entity in India with a mission to
help conceive market‐driven breakthrough products and achieve global scale.
We are focused on helping technology product companies by providing consulting,
training, coaching and operational interventions in the Product Management, Customer
Management and Marketing Management areas.
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For more information, please visit http://www.confianzys.com.
Company Confidential: Confianzys Consulting Pvt. Ltd November 2010
www.confianzys.com Email: engage@confianzys.com