Pain to profit: How to make product management strategic

Adam Davis May 11, 2023

Synopsis

Many product groups find that they are feature factories – they are forced to do what they are told, when they are told to do it, and they become slaves to the next requirement. Feature factories are cost centers, every year the executives will ask them to do more with less. Worse, they are not in control of your own destiny. They, take orders from sales, from marketing, from the CEO, and people will never be satisfied with what the product does.

Real product groups fulfill the company strategy. They are product aligned, and empowered. Because they push the company forward and fulfill strategy, they have a seat at the decision table. They are asked how to grow the company rather than being told what to do.

In this presentation, we are going to talk about how to transform a group from a feature factory to a proper product management group, how to create roadmaps, how to align them to the company strategy, and how to have product management and engineering become as a profit center and a driver of the company.

Our speaker

“Better Products Faster,” has always been my mission. Coupled with the strategic implementation of the lean start-up method, this mission has led to major valuation increases for a quickly growing list of more than 30 technology companies. My strategies are becoming the standard for how technology companies scale while continuing to deliver products that impact the lives of their customers. I began my career in R&D and now lead teams in more than seven countries for clients that ship products for tens of millions of customers. Some of my career highlights include: building products with more than 600 billion monthly page views, building hardware and the operating system for an augmented reality device, assisting Lynda.com in their $1.5B sale to LinkedIn, advising The Walt Disney Company on Disney+, founding two companies, and serving as an advisor and executive for three unicorns.