Product Management: Is Extinction Inevitable or a Bold Evolution?

8 min readAug 3, 2023

Hope you’re here for the read and not too scan for flame & controversial claims to bash. On my side, I will stay positive and offer some examples to support my argument.

“Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.”
Marcus Aurelius

The above phrase sticks in my mind. My take is that no matter what we do or build, need to conform to nature’s laws; otherwise, it’s doomed to fail. Reader, don’t jump to conclusions about Product Management‘s death as it’s not “natural” yet! Evolving and transforming is also an act of nature — that’s where we’re at with Product Management right now.

Nature metaphor of Software as a Service environment

Let’s make a metaphor from nature for Saas and work our way to Product Management.

A plant with a flower on top. Vertical lines separating the roots, stem and flower. An text explanation for each one saying that roots are the foundation everything is build on( the vision, core code & frameworks), stem as the development/growth of the product, and flowers as the final product and the interface for interaction with customers/users.

If Saas is a plant, containing all parts that define the served product, we have:

The Roots, act as the base for everything; developing and nurturing the rest of the plant. The product vision, as well as the core codebase and frameworks in use, could be the Roots. The Founding team, the Heads of departments, the Infrastructure or DevOps team, and some core Engineering team members are also parts of the root.
The Stem grows to make the plant take over more space and be able to receive more nutrients. All development defines parts of the stem, with cross-functional parts being the branches. This is where the Engineering team flourishes! Building and sustaining all the functionalities are vital for the whole Saas business!
The Flowers are the main interface with people using the service (bees & bugs). The flowers radiate beauty and bring people into the service who enjoy nutrients and help the plant grow. This is where all customer-facing departments thrive; Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Customer Support, and Community management.

More or less, these plant parts define a small lily flower and a huge Sequoia tree — feel free to call the stem a trunk on larger plants!

Where is Product Management?

By now you’ve noticed I didn’t mention a thing about the Product team. That’s because the Product team is weird! Depending on the state of a Saas company its functions change; evolve. That evolution is the core of this study, so let’s jump right in.

Product Management in different Saas company maturity stages

Depending on the maturity of a Saas company, there are different needs of a person with a “Product Management” hat.

Angel-fund, Pre-Seed stage

At this stage, our Saas plant has grown a stem, showing its potential to the world. There is no flower blossomed just yet!

An image of a growing avocado in a glass. There’s a small stem emerging and a big root inside the water. Reading on the side are “Stem” — what we see, and “Root” — foundation — Image from a Linkedin post, some time ago

At the angel-fund or pre-seed stage, Product Management is a hat that one of the founders wears. Product Management is the jack of all trades! Usually, that person manages the work backlog, talks with customers, promotes the product, writes posts, and performs support and troubleshooting for other people using the platform.

First-round funding stage

At this stage, our Saas plant potential is visible to the world. Customer-facing departments are starting to develop to support further growth.

A virtual flower, with pedals for Sales, Marketing, Community, Customer Support, and Customer Success. There’s a central part depicting “Offered Service” surrounded by a white circle titled “Product team” which interacts with each pedal.

Product Management enters a first evolution from the pre-seed stage. At this point, Product Management works with all other teams to identify areas of improvement from incoming feedback and communicate back the value offered by new service developments. The Product Manager is now a facilitator, doing work with every department to keep everyone in sync with what’s going on.

Another important aspect of the role is securing that any new service developed has a positive outcome for the customers and people using the platform. Product Management is the only department caring about the holistic outcome of the service offered. Usually, each department focuses on a smaller part of that outcome; Sales on ARR, Marketing on qualified leads, etc.

The work required from each department is vast, leaving little room for actual collaboration. Everyone is busy building departments from the ground up. The Product team is “the glue” between departments, trying to align everyone around the offered service.

Companies on a second funding round or going self-sustained

At this stage, our Saas plant has a proven value already shared with the world. Customer-facing departments are maturing. Introducing new functions that mix two departments and fulfill specific functions.

A virtual flower, with pedals for Sales, Marketing, Community, Customer Support, and Customer Success. Pedals overlap defining new roles for the overlaps as Account Executive between Sales and Customer Success, or Support Engineer between Customer Success and Customer Support. There’s a central part depicting “Offered Service” surrounded by a white circle titled “Product team” spanning just below cross-departments overlaps.

Product Management enters a second evolution for companies in a sustainable business stage. A big part of the roles that Product Management was covering has now dedicated people to work on:

Sales Enablement means no more designing and building lengthy presentations on new features.
Account Executive means no sync between Product, Sales, and Customer Success to define how to handle a renewing customer.

The team has grown and those functions are properly handled by individuals.

Product management can now focus on:

Getting more insights and feedback
Informing each department of new and changed values offered
Securing a positive outcome for all services offered.

Communications on the new roles happen behind a specific department. The Product team is informed indirectly on any work that needs the Product’s attention.

Companies with a mature departmental structure

At this stage, our Saas plant has produced several flowers and fruit. The departments have established good processes and have an elevated headcount.

Product Management evolves once more. This time the focus is on supporting and keeping in sync with all teams on the offered service. Despite, the greater overlap between departments bringing more collaboration, the Product team aligns everyone under a single goal and direction; the Roadmap and positive outcomes on delivered services. The goal of positive outcomes for the whole service becomes central to the role.

Product Management is facilitation and reminders at this point. Making sure that everybody shares a common goal and direction. Product Management still needs to connect offered services with the value and benefits that customers/people-in-the-service get. There’s a need from Product Management to connect the dots from all offered services to build a completely new offering!

My assumption is that the above paragraph brought up a thought in your mind like “…but John from Sales does that already in my company!”, or “…our Customer Success department can pretty much connect the dots already”! If that’s the case then please keep reading! That’s the point I want to make!

The Future: full-circle departments managing everything!

At this stage, the company is mature enough to skip Product Management on help or translation of Services offered to other teams! Departments share a common understanding of the holistic outcome of the offered services! I’ve seen that happening with certain individuals across departments. Imagine that a representative from each department can connect the dots and is curious enough to connect with all other departments!

Here we’re talking about true collaboration and innovation, ala IBM campus mid-70s style! The company has all the right minds across departments, building innovation on offered services! What else one could ask for?

At this stage, Product Management is nowhere :). All the other departments have stepped up to cover what Product Management offers. Open discussions and collaboration from people truly caring about the services offered lead to consensus around priorities and important things to work on next.

AirBnB recently eliminated pure Product Management, and Basecamp is going without Product Management forever. This is a way more efficient and fluid way of working. Could be a potential future.

So is Product Management doomed?

As you’ve noticed so far, Product Management was always close to the offered value of a Saas business. Meaning that Product Management is central; in and around the value offered from the services created.

Using the presented metaphor of a flower, Product Management conveys the value offered between the customer-facing teams and the Engineering teams. Similarly, Product Management highlights the positive outcomes of work delivered to the Engineering team, exposing technical people to the higher benefits for people experiencing the service offered.

A side view of a flower, showing colored pedals that imply Sales, Customer Success, Customer Support, Community, and Marketing. in the center of the flower there’s a circle titled “Offered Service”. A section connecting the flower with the stem is called “Product Team”, while the stem is called “Techhical Implementation”, there are two directional arrows connecting “Product Team” with “Technical Implementation”

In all the stages described, Product Management needs to be there to connect the flower with the stem. Product Management usually translates a business need, a business requirement into the specific that a developing team needs to build this functionality in a way that makes sense for the customers.

So does this mean Product Management is doomed or not?

It depends on the people of the Engineering team. I’ve seen cases where a Technical Lead and a Head of Engineering made the leap to join the table with customer-facing teams! So Engineering actively participated in the brainstorming and creative sessions! Engineering built empathy for the customer and user problems to care about the produced outcomes and ask questions post-release!

A reality check before closing

All things considered, agile methodologies teach us autonomy, ownership, and experimentation. Considering how mature agile is and how it’s used by successful companies, such a future is possible.

The requirements to get there are really really (really) hard to reach though:

You need the right set of individuals on each of the other teams; Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Customer Support, you name it! The mindset needed is the one described in The Infinite Game, where each person understands the whole and empathizes with the user and customer at all levels.
You need the right support and push from the company; Promoting agility and offering the much-needed trust and freedom to act and experiment!
You need a proven product that rocks already, or you’ll have more demons to deal with!

On the flip side, all remaining Product team roles — not analyzed here — could be the bridge to support missing skillsets or empathy. For example, a Product Designer could be the user supporter and positive outcome ambassador for the whole team!

In that sense, Product Management is saved by statistics and probabilities, at least for today and maybe tomorrow! 🙂