The History and Evolution of Product Management (Part 3)
Read the first two parts of this article here and here.
The 1980s
The role of Product Management in computer hardware and software is still young since these industries are younger than the Consumer Packaged Goods industry. And the pioneer among software companies that began incorporating “brand management” principles to software products was Intuit.
Intuit is a business and financial software company that develops and sells financial, tax preparation, and accounting software to small businesses, accountants, and individuals.
The company was founded in 1983 by Scott Cook and Tom Proulx. Scott was a former Procter & Gamble “brand man” himself.
Quicken was Intuit’s first product. Scott Cook created this finance software for home users and not financial experts. For example, the product could be for an intelligent stay-at-home mom who could still use the product without having to be a finance expert. She could thus perform the calculations she needed without much effort.
To achieve this, founders of Intuit went so far as to imitate the look and layout of the traditional physical checkbook on a monochrome 80X25 character text screens of that time. Of course, there were already many home finance software products available in the market. However, the number one problem was the difficulty of use for an average person.
One of the best ways to get to know how customers use your product is to observe those customers in their actual usage environment.
Intuit’s innovation was to be customer-centric. Taking the customer’s needs into account helped their product team create one of the most successful software packages of all time. One of the unique innovations of Intuit was the so-called “Follow me home” program which is being described in the book “Inside Intuit” by Suzanne Taylor and Kathy Schroeder.
In the 1980s, ease of use was not typically something that could describe financial software. A lot of vendors were only focused on selling software, not making it user-friendly. But Intuit was not like others. At Intuit, they realized the importance of a very interesting concept. One of the best ways to get to know how customers use your product is to observe those customers in their actual usage environment. In this case it was their homes. So, through the “Follow me home” program, Intuit would get permission from their customers to send a company representative to the customer’s house and watch them install and use the product on their home computer.
Needless to say that Intuit got deep insights from the “Follow me home” program which helped them enhance the product and create an incredibly loyal customer base. Even today, putting aside their successful tech products, Intuit is considered to be a very strong bearer of Product Management principles.
Thus, we have the ground to state that Intuit had a vital role in the development of tech Product Management as a discipline though others helped shape it as well.
The 1990s
Companies started applying some of the same principles of consumer product management to their software products. Accordingly, the tech products started to get more consumer-focused.
Intuit started this movement, and Microsoft and other tech companies followed it. At the very beginning, Microsoft did not have the Product Management discipline. What they had was called Program Management. But as time passed, organizations realized that the engineers alone could not meet technical requirements and create coherent products for users. There was a need for someone to be the translator between these two parties. The role of the Program Manager was thus very similar to the one of the modern-day Product Manager. Former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky used to describe that role as filling gaps that software engineers were not able to.
Program Managers were needed when Microsoft started developing Excel for Macintosh. The developers had to concentrate on the technical aspects of the work, such as printing, display, graphics as well as new algorithms for modeling and spreadsheets. This meant that the teams were focusing less attention on the usability and the actual business value of each individual feature. From here came the need for a new role, and Program Manager’s role came into play with a primary goal of collaborating with the development team and working through the whole product cycle as the advocate for end users. So, Program Managers had to be present from the very first day of the product lifecycle by planning it and executing the plan.
The Jan-Feb 1991 issue of the Harvard Business Review included an article by technology marketing guru Regis McKenna. The article was entitled “Marketing is Everything.” In the article, McKenna described the changes that technology was bringing into marketing. He starts the article with the following words:
“The 1990s will belong to the customer. And that is great news for the marketer.
Technology is transforming choice, and choice is transforming the marketplace. As a result, we are witnessing the emergence of a new marketing paradigm — not a “do more” marketing that simply turns up the volume on the sales spiels of the past but a knowledge — and experience-based marketing that represents the once-and-for-all death of the salesman.”
McKenna describes this “new marketing” as providing choice, change, credibility, and as being an integrator, allowing the customer to be a participant and synthesizing technological capability with market needs. Even though McKenna here talks about Product Marketing, the above mentioned statement proves how customer-centric mindset becomes an integral part of various disciplines. He propagates the knowledge-(data-) and experiment-based cultures and customer-centric approach to solve business problems more effectively. What McKenna describes in his article is more of a discipline that is knowledge-based, that involves working closely with customers on product development, and that can help the company push forward and continue to grow.
The 2000s and 2010s
The Product Manager’s role has evolved organically. However, universities still lack accredited Product Management programs. There are some graduate courses for brand and product management, but they are mainly concentrated on the consumer goods industry, not the tech world. Since there is no ultimate training for Product Managers, a lot of companies have created their own rules and principles.
For example, companies like Google, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Adobe shape modern-day product management and set the trends for its development too.In fact, the role of the Product Manager varies by company. However, it deals with three main areas which are engineering, design and business.
What does the future of Product Management hold for us?
Unfortunately, not all companies have got Product Management organizations or product teams yet.
However, companies are on the way of realizing the need to have a proper product culture. A lot of them have started acknowledging the need of being data-driven. The competitive landscape is widening which means that companies should be data-driven and should work on offering unique value propositions.
Secondly, the product management discipline will include another important skill set which is working with big data. This is what Marty Cagan said in this respect, “One of the most significant changes in how we do product today is our use of analytics. Any capable product manager today is expected to be comfortable with data and understand how to leverage analytics to learn and improve quickly.”
So, gut feeling or intuition is no longer enough for product success. Companies need to listen to what potential customers want as well as be able to analyze data for better decisions.
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