Product Development & Management

10 Challenges Every Product Manager Faces

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And one proven way to handle them with speed and finesse.

For product managers and their counterparts, the road to launch is a fight to keep every task, every detail and every change grounded in business goals. It’s not enough to be fast. Or to deliver the right product. You need to do both. Yet, the tools product managers depend on are often the weakest link, and not up to the tasks of fast-paced iterative development. But whatever product management tools and methodologies you’re using, you’ll still need to tackle these 10 challenges:

  • Engaging all the right stakeholders in the most effective, efficient manner (knowing who to involve, when and how)
  • Tracking product, program and project details while responding to a constant stream of new information
  • Finding critical information you need at the moment you need it instead of searching through emails, spreadsheets, SharePoint, tribal knowledge in team members’ heads, etc.
  • Keeping teams in-sync and updated on what they are planning, building, testing and releasing
  • Prioritizing and re-prioritizing what goes into each release, based on new information, insights and pressures from multiple voices—everyone from front-end users to engineers to sales to support
  • Revisiting decisions and changes because you haven’t been able to capture context, discussions or approvals in an accessible manner
  • Identifying opportunities to reuse and synchronize projects, items and components to reduce risk and save time
  • Navigating and mastering the complexity of products, projects, processes, teams and communication
  • Struggling to delight business customers while juggling overtaxed resources and tight deadlines
  • Ensuring on-time, within-budget delivery of the right product

 Check out The Product Delivery Problem (It’s Not You) to uncover the one surefire way to establish and maintain a strong connection between intended outcomes, development methodologies and customer value.

jama-the-product-delivery-problem-landing-page

Do you have any particularly problematic product challenges not listed here? Share what’s on your mind in the comments or send us a tweet and read our next practical product management and development post here.

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