Let’s get to the point. Managing products well, just isn’t easy. If it was, every company would have rock-star products on ever steepening growth curves and revenue KPIs that puts you on your CFO’s Christmas Card list. Yup, it just doesn’t happen in the real world and more likely is that you have a range of products in your portfilio, some of which are constant bearers of bad news.
But strong Product Management, isn’t just about ensuring you have a balanced focus across your portfolio (or that your portfolio allows for the introduction of business-critical new product), it’s much more complex than that.
So how do you go about reviewing the stength of your company’s Product Management? Of course, you could initiate an internal review or bring in one of the Big Four consultancy groups but will either of those routes really help you get to the real issues that need addressing and therefore drive your business to more profitable products?
At Skull Mountain, I’ve been working closely with the team of product experts to develop a Diagnostic offering, designed specifically to enable company’s to kick-start it’s journey to what we call Profitable Product Management. So what does it entail?
The Objective is to anayse your digital product offering and approach to diagnose areas for improvement, this in turn will ultimately unlock profitable growth, improve efficiencies in your processes and transform your company’s product culture mindset.
The Diagnostic consists of a rapid investigation of your product portfolio and targetted issues through a workshop with key stakeholders, tailored Health Surveys and in-depth interviews (anonymised data).
This can all take place over a 3-calendar week period at the end of which a consise Diagnostic report and supporting presentation is delivered to your senior management team including immediate and actionable steps for addressing the findings.
Numerous Skull Mountain clients have already taken advantage of the Diagnostic service and typically report the following benefits:
- Significantly improved the value and productivity of digital output
- Increased c-suite clarity of the status and true business value of projects
- Improved value and quality of data collection
- Sharper focus on data-led strategic decision making
- Consensus among product and delivery teams
- Optimised internal processes, cutting out wasted bureaucracy
Of course, there is no silver bullet in the search for fully optimsed Product Management and each company naturally brings it’s own unique challenges, but evaluating the problems and finding the right path forward doesn’t have to be daunting.
By Mick Robins, Product Consultant at Skull Mountain
