Products

Product
A product is a named collection of business capabilities that are valuable to a defined customer segment. Although business products are mostly serving external customers, organizations can also apply the product model to any collection of business capabilities delivered in a coherent value stream to internal customers. A product may also be a repeatable service (based on a subscription, for example).


Product Management
The process of conceiving, defining, delivering, monitoring, refining, and withdrawing products to maximize business results.

Product management responsibilities range from research on markets, customers and competitors, to developing and maintaining the product vision and roadmap. In this context, the product management responsibility in focus is working with product delivery teams to define, prioritize and test their delivery of product capabilities to maximize value and business impact.

Use a product when:

• You will continuously work to maximize the value of a named collection of business capabilities. The product can be digital, physical or abstract
• You have a need to provide multiple updates and improvements after initially creating the asset.

Explore product theory

• Products vs Platforms
• Product Releases
• Product Roadmaps
• Product Management

Learn how to:

• Create a Product
• Define a release
• Build a roadmap
• Report on progress

Product Manager vs. Product Owner

The roles can be combined, there should be one, and only one, Product Manager for each product. If you have a separate Product Owner role in addition is really a matter of the size of the Manager+Owner job and the geographical placement of the roles (The Product Owner part needs to be with the development team).

https://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com/product-owners-vs-product-managers/

As you can see in the following diagram, the role of Product Manager is different, yet overlapping, with that of a Product Owner (PO). The PO will spend the majority of their time on tactical activities, including working with the team to communicate stakeholder needs to them and working with stakeholders to elicit and prioritize their needs. The Product Manager, on the other hand, spends most of their time on more strategic issues, collaborating closely with customers (and potential customers) to identify their potential needs.

Figure 1. Example of rolling wave planning for product functionality (click on image for larger version).

There is clearly overlap between strategic, long-term thinking and tactical, short-term implementation. Product Owners are responsible for the Product Backlog in Scrum, what Disciplined Agile DAD (DAD) teams might refer to as a Work Item List or in the case of teams who have adopted one of the lean lifecycles a Work Item Pool, and some of the items in the backlog/list/pool might be several months away from being implemented (if ever). In Figure 1, these are items that fall into the yellow or red timing areas, or even the grey area. Product Managers, being responsible for strategic thinking, will be focused on high-level outcomes or themes for the product. They may even be focused on more concrete, yet still high level, epics or features. So we see overlap in the Product Manager’s high-level strategic focus and the Product Owner’s tactical focus, indicating the need for collaboration between the two roles so that the tactical decisions reflect the overall strategy, and the overall strategy is informed by the realities faced on the ground by the delivery team.