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By Daniel Cernoch
Senior Solutions Strategist, Justice and Homeland Solutions
and Louis Tan
Senior Product Manager, Justice and Homeland Solutions
Understanding Product Complexity and Behind-the-scenes Product Management Helps Ensure Mission Success
Has your organization clearly defined its products?
Consider that, beyond examples like the .gov registry and Logging Made Easy (LME), government services and programs can (and should) be thought of as “products” to help ensure effective outcomes. Why? Because the core principles of product management — customer centricity, data-driven decision making, cross-functional collaboration, etc. — still apply.
The iceberg is a perfect metaphor to help us define products in this sense. A product is often perceived solely as its implementation — the tip of the iceberg that is visible and tangible to customers. However, the total reality of a product extends deep beneath the surface, encompassing every interaction a customer has with the product and the organization behind it. This deeper layer includes the user experience, customer support, marketing, and the underlying technology that powers the product, as well as the processes and strategies that enable its development, deployment, and continuous improvement. Each of these elements is crucial for the product’s functionality and success.
Viewing a product holistically means acknowledging this complexity and understanding that the visible implementation is supported by a robust framework of interrelated components. These hidden elements work together to deliver value, ensuring the product meets customer needs and expectations. Products are not standalone entities, but dynamic systems influenced by various factors, including market trends, customer feedback, and technological advancements.
The Need for Effective Product Management
Defining your organization’s products matters because failing to do so results in unclear direction, misaligned priorities, and inefficient resource use, leading to products that don’t meet customer needs, wasting precious budget dollars, and hindering your ability to achieve your mission.
Enter the product manager: the person whose job it is to navigate your organization to effective product management.
Product management involves not just guiding, but taking ownership of a product throughout its lifecycle, from conception to market to eventual decommissioning. That includes planning, development, launch, and lifecycle management, all with the end goal of meeting customers’ needs and business goals. A product manager’s role consists of both the public-facing work that everyone sees, and the foundational, behind-the-scenes work that may be easy to overlook, but which is essential for driving lasting product success.
Every agency has customers. But to achieve mission success, you have to understand them.
Product Management: Engaging Stakeholders and Users
The public-facing elements of a product manager’s role can be broken down into three categories:
- Product Launches and Demos — When a new product is launched, the product manager often becomes the face of the product, presenting its features and benefits to stakeholders, users, and even the media.
- Customer-centric Interactions — Engaging with users, gathering feedback, and addressing concerns help to shape a product’s direction and are essential for the success of the product and its audience.
- Stakeholder Meetings — Regular updates and presentations to leadership, contract managers, and other key stakeholders ensure that everyone is aligned and aware of the product’s progress.
The Foundational Work of Product Management
The bulk of a product manager’s work happens behind the scenes but is critical for making any organization’s product management efforts successful, including:
- Market and User Research and Analysis — Before a product can take shape, early and extensive research is conducted to understand user wants and needs, competing or existing products, and potential opportunities. This foundational work is critical for developing a product that helps users address their most important challenges.
- Strategic Planning — Developing a product roadmap, setting long-term goals, and aligning the product strategy with the organization’s overall vision requires deep strategic thinking. This involves balancing short-term wins with long-term objectives, a task that is largely invisible to those outside the product team.
- Cross-functional Collaboration — Product managers work closely with various teams — engineering, design, marketing/branding, user experience, and user support — to ensure that the product is developed and delivered successfully. Coordinating these efforts and resolving conflicts demands strong interpersonal skills and a deep understanding of each team’s needs and constraints. Most importantly, amidst all the collaboration, product managers must keep a firm hand on the wheel. At the end of the day, they’re still the ones tasked with driving a product towards sustainability and success.
- Prioritization and Decision Making — Human-centered design thinking, combined with a data-driven approach, determines which features to develop and which to defer. This involves analyzing data, understanding user needs, and making sometimes tough trade-offs. These decisions are crucial for maintaining the product’s focus and delivering value to users, yet they often go unnoticed.
- Problem Solving and Crisis Management — Unexpected issues are a part of any product development process. Whether it’s a technical glitch, a shift in requirements or scope, or an internal team conflict, product managers must be adept at troubleshooting and crisis management, often working behind the scenes to keep development on track.
- Metrics and Performance Tracking — Monitoring the product’s performance, analyzing usage data, and making data-driven improvements are important for long-term success. This continuous process of evaluation and iteration is critical but often hidden from view.
Executing Product Management for Long-Term Success
Understanding the product iceberg reveals the complexity of a product, particularly when taking a holistic view. Similarly, effective product management demands a specific kind of talent: someone who can navigate high-impact, public-facing responsibilities with the vast amount of behind-the-scenes work necessary to ensure lasting product success. This is a critical, often underserved area that, if your organization gets it wrong, can have ripple effects that hinder your ability to meet your customers’ needs or achieve your mission.
