Project management fits inside product management process
Wednesday, February 21, 2007 09:57 AM
Tom Mochal describes the difference between project management and product management.
"Projects" are the way that new work gets delivered. "Project management" refers to the processes used to create or enhance the product.
"Products," on the other hand, are tangible items that are produced by a project. (If you purchased a vendor product, then the vendor produced the product using a project.) If the product is temporary or has a short lifespan, we don't normally consider it a product. Usually products are a term given to something that we build and maintain for a long period of time.
Product management is an approach for centrally coordinating the activities surrounding the inception, business case, development and the long-term support and enhancement of a product. You can think of product management as encompassing the full lifecycle of the product. The person that executes these responsibilities is called a Product Manager.
The role of the Product Manager varies depending on where the product is in the product lifecycle. The following areas describe some of the specific responsibilities of the product manager for internal and vendor developed products.
Inception- Capture the idea so that it can be explored more fully.
- Identify opportunities for use of the product
Business case
Nurture an idea through the company's business planning
process to see if it can be funded. If the idea is never fulfilled, then the
product management lifecycle is very short.
Project
A project is started to build the product. At this point,
project management and product management overlap. The product manager may be
assigned the role of the project manager as well, but it is more common that a
project management specialist is introduced to manage the project to
completion.
- Coordinate testing of new products and releases, including coordinating pilots with potential product users
- Determine when a product is "production-ready" based on testing and pilot projects
- Coordinate the deployment of the product or new releases
Maintenance and support
This is where the long-term product management occurs. It
may have taken a few months to get the work funded, and it may take some months
for the product to be built. However, the product may be supported and enhanced
for many years afterward. The product manager may do the support and
enhancements, but it is likely that a dedicated support organization is
involved.
- Act as the primary contact for coordination and communication with the product vendor (vendor products)
- Monitor product direction with the vendor (vendor products)
- Track where the product has been deployed
- Receive ongoing requests from the staff for individual products
- Integrate and adds new products and releases (vendor products)
- Coordinate negotiation of product contracts, purchase agreements, and maintenance agreements (vendor products)
- Ensure that budget is available for product purchases and maintenance
- Determine when to consider canceling or reducing maintenance payments based on product direction (vendor products)
- Coordinate certification of new releases (vendor and internal products)
- Plan and manage new release implementation (vendor and internal products)
- Determine when product need to be retired
- Plan and manage product retirement
- Retire (uninstall) the product from the environment
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