Product Management Frameworks define the team’s approach to product management and align the team around roles, responsibilities and a common purpose to deliver the best product possible.
About this Primer
This series of articles is meant to be a primer on Product Management Frameworks to help your team find a process that works and focus on delivering a great product. It will give your a common ground for discussion, no matter what your experience is. If you’re having a debate about what kind of product management framework to use, this is a great article to send around. Once you read it, you and your team can have a healthy discussion around what kind of framework to use and then get your focus back on product delivery.
When you get a chance check out our Product Management Frameworks Survey and share your own experience.
Why Product Management Frameworks?
Product Management Frameworks are about speeding up product delivery and achieving product market fit. Every team large and small follows a process consciously or not. Building a common understanding of how everyone is working together as a team to deliver the product is critical to the product management role.
Product management frameworks should always about delivery and execution to achieve product market fit.
Common Problems
Framework decisions devolve into debate over execution when:
- Key leaders anchor on frameworks from their own experience at a previous company as the best practice just because it’s what they know, not because it’s what the market needs. (Top consulting firm alumni do this a lot.)
- Internal Power Struggles dominate the discussion rather than the market context
- Blamers scapegoat the process instead of the execution
When this happens, it is import for product leadership and executive management to provide a common vision and get the team aligned around product delivery.
Types of Product Management Frameworks
To pick a product management framework, it helps to understand the purpose a framework was designed for. Then, think first about what your market needs, not your team’s experience. There are as many frameworks as there are Consulting firms out there, so it can quickly get overwhelming to think about.
It helps to think of Product Management Frameworks in different families:
Depending on where you work, you’ll find the product team favors the school of thought from one or more of these families.
Let’s start with the birth of Product Management:
Next: Brand Management
Related Articles
More from this series:
- Brand Management
- Stage Gate Models
- Design Thinking
- Agile Methodologies
- Go-To-Market Frameworks
- Startup Frameworks
Ross Reynolds works a product manager in brand protection and media. He currently is VP of Product & Marketing for Marketly, a startup in Silicon Valley. He likes building products and helping new ventures grow.
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