into your project management programs
ADVISORY ARTICLE
By Malte Scholz
CEO and co-founder, airfocus
Hamburg, Germany
IT project management has long been a staple in the software industry. It’s based on helping leaders reach success and enabling enterprises to see their critical initiatives through to completion.
Gather resources, craft the project plan, confirm the budget, and check off completed items as work progresses. Then celebrate with the team if the project was completed without exceeding allocated resources.
That’s the idea anyway. People who work in IT will also testify that project management does not always run smoothly. IT projects still come in over budget, under-resourced, and not consistently delivering the value initially promised. Sometimes they are not even finished.
With the changing needs of today’s market, a project management approach on its own simply won’t cut it. People need to move away from a focus on completing tasks, progress meetings, and hitting deliverables, and move more to the following of behaviors and measuring success based on outcomes. This requires product management to be part of the mix.
Living in a product-centric world
Product management usage has increased enormously over the past few years. This is due in no small part to the fact that we live in such a product-centric world. Customers expect brilliance and innovation in their products – whether digital or physical, B2B or B2C – and are prepared to go elsewhere if those product expectations are not met.
This has given way to a shift towards defined product propositions that are mapped closely to the evolving priorities of customers. There is a keen focus now on product-led growth where product development teams assume more of a strategic, high-profile role in their organizations. The success of this has led to the application of product management strategies and approaches to internal IT project management.
Making the necessary organizational changes is hard and takes time. However, there are some actionable steps enterprises can take to utilize product management alongside their IT project management, including:
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How to cite this article: Scholz, M. (2022). How to incorporate product management into your project management programs, PM World Journal, Vol. XI, Issue VI, June. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/pmwj118-Jun2022-Scholz-incorporate-product-management-into-your-pm-programs.pdf
About the Author
Malte Scholz
Hamburg, Germany
Malte Scholz is a product manager and entrepreneur with deep product management knowledge and a track record of developing SaaS and mobile tech. He is co-founder and CEO of airfocus, the fully customisable, flexible, and modular product management platform. Check it out at https://airfocus.com/ or contact Malte at https://de.linkedin.com/in/maltescholz?original_referer=
