What we learned from our survey of 550 product managers and leaders

Since 2015, Alpha has surveyed product managers at startups and large organizations to gather their best practices, modern challenges, and impactful strategies.

This year, we surveyed more than 550 product managers and leaders, and the data from our 2020 Product Management Insights Report revealed some surprising stats and trends that will shape product management in 2020 and beyond.

The report highlights the growing impact that product management has on organizational growth. Product teams are solving some of the toughest challenges facing organizations today, such as digital and strategic transformation, signaling that the discipline no longer influences narrow parts of a business or a company’s overall strategy. Among the report’s key findings:

Product management enters the C-Suite: Startups and enterprise organizations alike are facing many high-level challenges like digital transformation and improving customer experience. Product management’s influence on solving those challenges has grown steadily, with nearly 60% of respondents saying incubating a new product or business line was high on the list of objectives.

Product development moves fast, but customer preferences move faster: 60% of respondents say direct customer feedback was the source of their best product and feature ideas, but most say they don’t conduct enough user research on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Surprisingly, 28% of respondents admitted that their best product ideas come from copying competitors.

Cross-functional collaboration can play an important role for product teams in 2020: 51% of respondents collaborate with market research on less than half their product projects. The time and rigor required to gather customer data is often at odds with the agility required to build innovative products and solutions, leaving a huge window of opportunity for improved collaboration between researchers and product teams.

Product managers find it most challenging to build and perfect product vision and roadmaps: 30% of product leaders identified a clearer product strategy as their biggest wish list item in 2020, but nearly 53% said they don’t have enough time to craft product roadmaps.

Tools and methodologies are maturing as the discipline matures: New and emerging technologies have the power to reshape the way companies build innovative products. 64% of those surveyed said they plan to incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning into their product offering this year.

To learn more, download the 2020 Product Management Insights Report infographic or the full 2020 Product Management Insights Report.