Another Story on Why You Need to Understand Your Environment

Inevitability, no matter how good a product manager you are and despite the best attention to gathering requirements and scoping out the release plans, you will run into a challenge. Most likely, whether you are in hardware, software or services, this challenge will be that your development team cannot meet the timeline (or the budget) with the list of features that need to be developed

This is the proverbial “golden triangle” issue. You can have the feature list, the budget, or the timeline – pick what is most important. Well, of course, your business client isn’t going to increase your budget, and the executives will be reluctant to extend your timeline; thus, leaving the feature list to be prioritized.  Ouch. Someone is not going to be happy if you cut their “item.” And, what about the market needs?

Most experienced product managers know to fall back on some sort of decision matrix. The question is – what are the elements to include in the weighting? I was asked this question over the past summer from a different opportunity. I was also asked this very question during a conversation today with a potential opportunity.

This summer, when I was asked, I explained to the hiring manager, that I would use a weighted matrix. He asked what my categories would be. I responded that I would include items such as cost to develop, complexity of development effort, time, number of occurrences where feature request was made, market demand, executive demand, competitive information, and, what specific categories may be relevant to the release at the time. He ended the conversation after this answer. The feedback I received later was that I didn’t understand his needs when it came to putting all of the features into a list.

Today, when asked the same question, I responded the same. However, this hiring manager liked the fact that matrix elements weren’t pre-defined; that I allowed for the flexibility to have shifting categories depending on the environment and initiatives that may be underway.

Looking in from the outside, having the skills to follow a structured disciplined approach to an element of product management is critical and essential; but, knowing how to be flexible and adapt to your environment is what separates the good product managers from the average (or bad.)