Multi-stakeholder processes require collaborations to be effective. Think of your own company and all the different departments and teams involved in developing your products. You have your designers and engineers who create the ideas for the products or the new features that will be integrated. You have the entire production team that covers sourcing materials, manufacturing components, and assembly. Then, there’s the marketing team is in charge of promoting the end product. All these players have significant roles to fill that depend on each other, and no one can complete their work in isolation.

It's no secret that managing product development is a complex process. You may have dozens of team leads or executives to check in with and keep informed. You could be working with one prototype product or managing an entire portfolio of product lines from original models to brand new launches. 

The role of a product manager is a rewarding one, even if it's not always glamorous. You're busy balancing the opinions and priorities of different departments, trying to keep everyone on the same page while maintaining ambitious timelines. Still, despite these challenges, seeing a new product or variation on a feature launch into the real world from the ideation stage to the sitting-on-a-shelf stage is incredibly satisfying. 

As a product manager, you know that your success depends on capturing and having access to accurate product definitions. But keeping track of all that data can be tricky– it's easy for information to get scattered across different files, databases, and teams. The problem gets more complex as your market grows and you want to extend your current products to new or adjacent markets. This can make it challenging to efficiently have all the information at your disposal to make informed decisions about your product.

As a product manager, you need a clear strategy to drive your product forward. Without a solid plan, you'll struggle and make little progress.  

There are plenty of product roadmap tools out there today. Still, our research has shown there is a clear need to improve product roadmaps to ensure teams of teams are aligned, the entire portfolio meets strategic business objectives, and there is efficiency in re-using components and increasing innovation. Many roadmap platforms today:

• Organize teams around one product at a time, not your entire portfolio
• Are more focused to meet the needs of developing software rather than physical products
• Can force you into specific ways of working rather than being flexible enough to adapt to the unique requirements different manufacturers do have

Struggle to understand the dependencies of product content across your product teams and your overall organization

PART 3
The impact on your org and how to be successful

To catch up with this series, please see here for Part 1: product planning for durable goods; and here for Part 2: getting started in our new integrated world.  

PART 2
Getting started in our new integrated world 

Please read Part 1 of this 3-part series on the move to Agile here: product planning for durable goods.

PART 1
Product planning for durable goods 

Seeing first-hand what our durable goods manufacturing clients face daily as they aim to update their processes got us thinking about what it really means to effect change in their environment. What tangible and intangible factors must be considered. How to approach an endeavor that they perceive will append their entire product management operation. Naturally, we mean the “switch” from more traditional Waterfall models to newer Agile ones.