Alexander Craig's blog

Digital Product Management is a young discipline.  It hardly existed only a few years ago – its functions typically falling under the remit of sales and marketing teams, project managers of course traditional product managers.

Now however it is recognised as unique and highly valued a discipline in its own right.  Getting the digital product management mix right in a modern, fast moving and often highly transformative corporate environment is a regular topic of conversation with many of the organisations we engage with at Magic Milestones.

While the full suite of digital product management conversation points is extensive (from what type of person makes the best DPMs to how should reporting lines be formed), two in particular come up time and again:

• Application of lean principles to digital product management;
• Centralisation vs. decentralisation of the product management function;

It was these topics we were recently invited to explore with members of the Product Development Group at the Association of Online Publishers.  This group of experienced digital product professional meets on a regular basis to share insights, ideas and best practice across an industry sector that has, in many ways, reinvented itself over the last five years.

Its member organisations include well known media brands, such as the BBC, CBS Interactive, Emap, Future Publishing, Guardian Media, IPC, News International, RBI, ThomsonReuters and Trinity Mirror Group.

The topics under discussion are close to the heart of most organisations that have embraced digital product development and, in particular, coupled it with agile delivery.  They are also topics close to my own heart as a consultant practitioner, working with clients to help bring innovation and efficiency to the creation of high-quality digital products.  Having the opportunity to discuss them with such a like-minded group was extremely insightful and much welcomed.

While we didn’t revolutionise the profession, we none-the-less agreed on some basic principles underpinning the thought-process in both areas.  These can be summed up as follows:

• Lean principles and techniques can be applied to digital product management throughout the discovery and evolution life-cycles;
• Pace of innovation backed by robust quantifiable success measures are critical to effective lean product discovery, as advocated by Tom Chi at Google X;
• Established principles of lean software development can be adapted as a good starting point;
• Centralisation can make the application of lean product management easier, but it can carry risk;
• Centralisation / decentralisation of digital product management happens on a sliding scale and an appropriate balance between the two needs to be found that works for as specific context;

Digital Product Management is an increasingly important function within so many organisations.  As the technology delivery teams become ever more agile and effective at building out the vision, it is increasingly important that the innovation and evolution of the digital product vision keeps pace.  Leaning out the process and correctly positioning the function within an organisation can make the difference between digital product management that leads through strong vision and a rapid flow of product ideas, or one that struggles to keep delivery engine fed while scrabbling around for “me too” designs.

You’ll find the slides that guided our discussion attached this post and we would love to hear your views on this topic.  If you want to talk to us about how Magic Milestones could help with your Digital Product Management dilemmas just drop the Magic Milestones team a line or give us them a call (+44 121 236 6833).

  Digital Product Management: Lean and Centralised?
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This article was first published on 10 June 2013 on the Magic Milestones blog.