Tips for Fostering a Successful Partnership between Product Management & Research

Partnership between Research and Product Management

The partnership between product managers and researchers is a topic that often comes up in discussions. As a researcher myself, I’ve heard from colleagues about their frustrations with the limited opportunity to contribute to product direction. Likewise, my PM Darius Koohmarey, has also engaged in conversations with fellow PMs on the best opportunities for leveraging researchers’ skill sets to create better products.

We’ve put together this blog to address some of the common questions and concerns we’ve encountered on this subject. Our aim is to provide insights that will help you establish a strong and effective working relationship with your team’s PMs and researchers

Questions from Research perspective:

How do you persuade your PM to leverage research?

The first step in convincing your PM to leverage research is to understand what questions they have that they are trying to get answered. The next step is to look at low-cost options that can fetch maximum results such as secondary research, research done by other researchers in your org that may be relevant. Once they start seeing some value from these then they are more likely to invest time and money into more research. The other thing I would suggest (for PMs who are very new to research) is to show them results from other studies you or your fellow researchers have done that benefited the product. Showing these outcomes can be a strong driving force that can help change minds.

How do you turn your PM partner into an ally and a champion?

For your PM to become your ally and a champion for research, it is important that they have reaped the benefits from your research. Once they have experienced this over time and multiple projects, then they are likely to speak up on your behalf. Once you do that, start building a relationship with your PM partners. Be proactive and try to anticipate what they may need next. To achieve this, it is necessary for you to have some product knowledge and awareness about product roadmap. Another thing researchers can do to build a relationship with PMs is to invite them to observe/listen in on your research sessions. Watching real users interacting with your product or providing feedback about it helps PMs look at their products from a user-centered perspective. Another idea to build a relationship, outside of work is to find common ground that you can both agree on and are passionate about.

How can you be more proactive as a researcher?

First, let’s understand why being proactive is an important skill to have as a researcher. As a researcher, if you can anticipate business needs and contribute in the decision making by providing insights at the right time, you can be highly influential. Being proactive also helps you create more impact on the product and drive product direction/future roadmap. Here are some things you can do to be more proactive —

• Participate in the sprint planning meetings
• Have a good grasp on the product roadmap and what’s the vision for the future of the product
• Understand your product domain
• Be on the lookout for any content (like newsletters, blogs, books, podcasts) that can help you visualize where the market is headed next.

How is the research done by the UX research team different from the feedback gathered by sales or PMs through customer feedback/design partner sessions? How to leverage both in different ways?

The feedback gathered from existing customers by sales or PMs is through a smaller lens of the customer and their users. This doesn’t represent your entire target audience. Since your customer is already invested in your product, they are likely to not be brutally honest. Also, they may have figured out a workaround for some usability issues, since they have been using your product for a while and may not notice it. So, this feedback can be somewhat biased. But it can be used to provide a better experience to existing users, ensuring higher renewal rates and customer satisfaction.

Research gathered by UX researchers is an outside in view and is not biased. Researchers also have access to the product’s target audience who are not your current customers. This can give you a wider scope of understanding and a better product market fit for a larger chunk of your target audience. Use this feedback to understand your target persona and their problems, prioritize your roadmap items, pinpoint usability issues, figure out the complexity involved in certain tasks etc.

When you as a researcher can’t provide your PMs with a full research study, what are the other ways in which you might be able to help?

There are times when researchers have to prioritize some projects over others due to lack of resources. During these times it is important that you don’t say no and shut the door on an opportunity to provide value and build a relationship with your PM partner. Instead, try to find a lightweight way to contribute. Provide data from past research or share insights from a study done by another researcher. Use secondary sources such as Gartner or Forrester reports, YouTube videos or podcasts done by trusted experts in the field, look at reddit threads where users are discussing the problem they may be facing while using your product. In recent times, ChatGPT has become another resource for secondary research.

How can we become strategic partners instead of service providers?

Developing a strategic partnership as a researcher requires effort and experience. It’s crucial to demonstrate your value and establish strong relationships. Being proactive and having a solid understanding of market trends allows you to anticipate your PM’s needs and earn their trust. With trust, your PM will seek your input more frequently, allowing you to become a voice of influence.

The ability to communicate effectively and the technical or domain expertise are essential factors in building these relationships. By honing your people skills and leveraging your expertise, you can position yourself as a key player in product development

Questions from PM perspective:

To understand why a PM needs to incorporate research into their product strategy and development, we first need to take a step back and reflect on the goals of a PM in the organization. Product managers are intended to deliver compelling differentiated products that solve customer needs in a valuable enough way to charge the customers and realize revenue. They want to build as quickly as possible, meaning eliminating rework, being agile with feedback, and having confidence that their solution will be met positively once in the market. On this note, they also want to be aware that what they are building is enduring, meaning there is a lot of longevity expected for the products lifecycle once in market. Researchers can help product managers gain confidence around what they are building to ensure product market fit, narrow in on target personas for go to market, pricing, and packaging, and provide a view into the current industry landscape and state of customers. They do this by providing unbiased insights from the target customers, users, and industry practitioners who would be likely buy or use the product. Research will help PMs maximize their investments and minimize business risk with product market fit, while strengthening the voice and positioning of the PM to sell their vision to stakeholders and their team.

Why does a PM need research?

In many organizations, the PM role reflects an individual that is considered a subject matter expert in their domain and industry. For an individual with such a deep pulse on the market, industry, competitors, and customers, what key value can research provide?

1. The first key benefit of research is in external validation of your hypothesis

• When generating product UI, product roadmap, or pricing, nomenclature and behavior will always resonate internally more clearly than externally. Research can help surface points of confusion for an outside in perspective, and can help insight into delightful features to prioritize.
• Direct quotes from relevant industry individuals and customers resonates better with leadership than your own opinion as a PM. For cases of new companies with few customers or partners for feedback, research is a great way to establish a quick pulse on sentiment around your offering. This can help strengthen your voice when selling your vision to your team and stkaeholders.

2. A second benefit is a removal of echo chamber

• Big customers can be overly impactful on roadmap as they drive most of the revenue, however they also will have a more narrow view of the world and best practices as they are already invested in your tool.
• The users of a few customers using your product today do not always represent the entire industry/market (TAM) you may want to build a product to capture, and research helps broaden this feedback.
• External research can help provide general market user needs beyond your current PMF / niche, and can help identify gaps in your portfolio or personas that your current solution doesn’t resonate with.
• Researchers can also access departments and users outside your immediate buyer and user in a company.

3. Finally, you can get strategic insights into market, customer, and industry trends

• While product managers generally solve for todays market need, research is able to look further into the future around organizational, technological, industry, and competitive trends and pressures that may have influence on future product investment.
• Research can provide high level guidance on the longevity of an investment, as well as the potential application of a product in other domains and contexts.

What types of research should you think about (e.g. qual vs quant) as a PM?

Depending on the type of feedback you are after, you should work with a researcher to identify the best form factor and distribution method for research. Large scale surveys can provide better insights on specific questions (e.g. check the box next to each software tool you use, rank a set of features) while 1:1 interviews can garner better feedback and discussion around UI or to understand a customers current ‘day in the life’, pain points, and needs without ‘leading the witness’. As a PM, you want to balance researching work that is inflight for delivery and production in the short term (6–12 months) with longer term strategic questions for your 2–3 year product vision. On this note, its good to have a ‘research roadmap’ with the key questions you want answered when, aligned to key product milestones. Try your best to empower the researcher(s) on exactly how the research gets done and what gets asked, and focus instead on making sure they understand the biggest questions you have.

What should your research focus on, depending on where your product is in its lifecycle?

1. For products not yet in the market and early on in the product lifecycle of ideation, research can help quantify demand, identify alternatives, and validate roadmap priorities and potential differentiators. Earlier in product development, you also have less customers to talk to, meaning research is a viable avenue to get external feedback while you work on standing up design partner programs.
2. As your product matures and enters development, you can focus on granular implementation feedback for A B testing UI or technology decisions. Research can also help provide a sounding board for pricing and packaging of the upcoming solution. The external researchers can also be useful for identifying problems or personas beyond your current customers/users or product scope.

What type of participation is expected from a PM for defining research, guides, questions, etc.?

Be mindful as a PM that you should have an idea of the biggest questions facing your engineers, designers, and product strategy. Whenever internal debates occur around technical or business direction, research can help provide an outside in perspective on direction. As a PM, you should expect to be a consultant to raise the priority and nature of the questions you want answered. The researchers should figure out the best ‘how’ around the format and nuance of questions to be asked in research, but the ‘what’ around the main questions for insight should come from the needs of the business.

What are examples where research has helped drive product decision and strategy?

Alongside many other sources of product input coming from internal product development teams, stakeholders, sales teams, product/customer success teams, and existing customers, research offers an additional avenue for unbiased input. Three key areas research can help include:

1. Design validation. You want to increase confidence in your design for what’s valuable at the lowest engineering cost. A B testing UI options helps validate engineering investment and prevents unnecessary rework post development
2. User personas. When creating a product, its features and capabilities could solve a wide range of industries, personas, and use cases. Research can help drive packaging and pricing, user journey maps, to make recommendations around the ideal customer profile based on where you see the most resonance
3. Roadmap. When considering current and future investment, research is a great way to get feedback and prioritization on roadmap to understand your customers current needs, as well as their own strategic imperatives internally that you may want to align to. For specific capabilities on the roadmap, research can help helping to identify perceived value and differentiators within your backlog which can feed into your product marketing and go to market narrative for your sellers.