There are numerous creative ways to start with a product management journey but the boundaries of these journeys are often found to have a limiting effect when these are discussed as part of the Go To Market or GTM strategies. One can find a product design idea to be so revolutionizing that it could change the face of doing business, yet without validation and enough testing or lab simulation, putting it straight as part of a product development roadmap can be futile. In online product management certification courses, trainers, who are mostly qualified product managers or product leaders in reputable companies, evoke interest among students by showcasing industry based examples of top challenges resulting in bottlenecks for any product management team.
Challenge 1: Overenthusiasm
Product managers are found to be mostly over-excited about their product development lifecycle, so much so that they want to be part of every discussion, every workflow conversation, and business intelligence decision. Your intention could be optimistic and well-rounded, but in reality, product management is hard wired to speed, agility, and flexibility. Taking too much of work and doing little on a product can actually backfire, not just for the product developers but also for the decision makers. Overenthusiasm among product developers and managers has been found to be a proven reason for causing bottlenecks due to the increased levels of communications slowing down the processes.
Challenge 2: Lack of autonomy
Product management teams are getting diverse and denser. This has resulted in the ambiguity of role management and delegation at work. Product Managers are expected to do too much work in a short span of time, even if it means overriding protocols established in the norms. This often leads to diluted autonomy and questionable leadership decisions that hamper the pace of deliveries. Most Product managers blame this lack of autonomy on the creation of data silos, which result due to a shifting focus on Product Management teams over the course of the journey. For those who have an online product management certification from a reputable institution, the lack of autonomy seldom impacts deliveries as these professionals are fully trained to understand the cross functional nature of different teams and how the final autonomy always lies not with the product team but with the customers.
Challenge 3: Great idea, but zero vision
The head of product hates surprises. It’s almost a professional offense to introduce surprises right in the course of established product management journeys without setting up for the outcomes. In product vision and product strategy, all aspects and dimensions of bottlenecks are carefully examined and contingency plans are laid in order to ensure deliveries and turnaround time are not affected. However, some overenthusiastic (challenge 1) who lack autonomy in the system come with an idea and take everyone by surprise (not good!) In product management online courses, train yourself for stability and not for creating surprises. It will help you and your product management team.
Challenge 4: Where is the benchmarking?
If there is one component that ties in with every successful product in the market—it’s this keyword: “benchmarking.”
Irrespective of which position you are currently working on or what stage of product you are currently handling, benchmarking or the lack of it can cause intense bottlenecks that can directly impact the “competitiveness” and sustainability of your product management journey. If you observe closely, some companies give immense importance to benchmarking and this culture is passed on to the online product management certification providers that they partner with.
Challenge 5: Distorted Application of “Gamification” Principles
Like all new technologies and capabilities, gamification in product management is a highly misunderstood term. It refers to the use of gaming scenarios applied to non-play tasks. It may seem fun and exciting to be deploying gamification concepts in product management, but if benchmarking events and vision strategy are missing, this could lead to premature failure of the product, particularly if all the purposeful activities like testing, security, and validation with QC are already complete.
How to solve this problem with autonomy in the team?
Leading product management gurus recommend taking a balanced approach and path to create an innovative ecosystem for an autonomous product development roadmap. These are often driven to be customer-centric and data analysis is the functional “oil” to derive insights and meaningful outcomes. Autonomy is broken down into stages such as prototyping, designing, programming and coding, and tests. In the modern product management context, the scope of autonomy is expanded to “full-stack developers” who more or less come across as generalists with keen eyes to identify and mitigate risks and bottlenecks. For successful validation using gamification techniques, proper training is required, which is available as part of the curriculum of product management certification courses.
