3 Trends Shaping The Future of Product Management

Since 2015, Alpha has surveyed product managers to uncover the evolution of best practices in the field. Our first annual Insights report painted a picture of a role that lacked definition and had yet to achieve widespread conception of modern best practices. Product managers reported not having a sufficient impact on a company’s overall strategy and not having the tools and resources that they needed to do their best work.

Our 2019 Product Management Insights report paints a different picture. In our survey of 253 product managers, we found some notable long-term trends that highlight the maturation of a field that is becoming more advanced and coalescing around a standard set of best practices. This article covers the three most notable trends that will shape product management in 2019 and beyond.

1. Experimentation has become a core part of product management’s role

In 2015, when we published our first Product Management Insights Report, we found that continuous experimentation was more of an aspiration than a common activity for product managers. As the field continues to discover and share best practices, product managers increasingly acknowledge the benefits of being customer-centric and data-driven and have increasingly incorporated experimentation into their workflows.

Product managers say that direct customer feedback is the best source of new ideas and 69% of product managers report being responsible for customer interviews, an increase of 10% over the past two years.

In addition, 34% of product managers conduct user research on a daily basis, and analytics preoccupy 58% of product managers on a daily basis.

2. Product managers want to cut through red tape

Even though product managers say that direct customer feedback is the number-one source of new ideas, and more product managers are collecting customer feedback on a regular cadence, 86% say that they still don’t spend enough time, or spend no time at all, talking to users and 80% of product managers reported not spending enough time, or spending no time at all, running product experiments.

These findings highlight the growing recognition that continuous experimentation is an aspiration that requires cultural shifts which cannot be made overnight. There are still major barriers to implementing these modern best practices at scale. Our report provides further insight into what these barriers may be, however, the fact that the biggest wish for product managers at companies over 10,000 people is more opportunity for experimentation brings hope that product managers can cut through the red tape.

3. Product management is a strategic role

Product managers are known for doing whatever needs to get done — which often entails doing a little bit of everything. While this “roll up your sleeves” attitude has certainly made product management a vital role in many organizations, it can come at the expense of being strategic.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen product management shift from a highly tactical, project-based role to a more strategic role. In our 2019 report, 89% of product managers say that they are responsible for setting the roadmap and 80% of product managers reported strategizing on a daily basis.

Product managers are often the liaison between teams and key stakeholders across their organizations and our data indicates that that’s likely to continue. 23% of product managers indicated that they want to spend more time collaborating with internal stakeholders, which represents a significant increase from last year’s study.

The evolution of product management

Our 2019 Product Management Insights report indicates that the field is becoming more unified on best practices and more strategic. Product managers have increasingly adopted experimentation and user research and want to do more of it this coming year. In addition, product teams are increasingly the liaison between key stakeholders in their organizations.

In this year’s report, we’ve also expanded our research to include insights about networking opportunities and the adoption of emerging technologies. There are now more conferences, resources, and tools than ever before to help product managers do their best work. Increasingly equipped with these resources, product managers have never had a better opportunity to apply modern best practices. The field that just a few years ago was often misunderstood and ill-defined, is now rich with opportunities to learn, network, and work smarter.

A version of this article was originally published on Mycustomer. Download the complete 2019 Product Management Insights report below.