Product Management is a commercial discipline, not technical, and its sole purpose is to maximise investor value. Its focus should be net EBITDA across the investment period plus the perceived monetary value of service delivery assets at the point of exit.

By consuming resources, notably capital, Product Management delivers service features that will generate both immediate and later revenues. It also builds the foundations for future products that increase enterprise valuation at the next point of investment. Note that products do not have to be proprietary – if someone else’s service gives better ROI then that’s the answer.

In order of priority, the main activities are to identify the market opportunities and value propositions that will deliver the corporate strategy, design products (features, routes to market, pricing etc.) that will maximise the value which the company can obtain in its target markets, determine the order of development to maximise the actual value obtained, and then shepherd development, launch and continuous improvement.

Maximum ROI comes from strong leadership as well as operating as an internal consultancy – both supporting and drawing from Sales, Marketing, Business Intelligence, Customer Success, Engineering and the CTO function.