The Strategic Shift: Project Management vs Product Management

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, companies recognize the need to shift from a traditional project-centric mindset to a more modern product-centric mindset. This transition is not for indulgence of a buzzword; but rather represents a fundamental change in how businesses conceive, develop, and deliver value to their customers. But why is this shift necessary, and what product management benefits does it bring to an organization? Let’s explore.

Project Management vs Product Management: Understanding the Difference

A project-centric mindset (“project management”) focuses on the completion of specific tasks within a defined timeline and budget. The objective is to deliver a particular output or deliverable with success measured by an on-time, on-budget delivery. In contrast, a product-centric mindset (“product management”) focuses on the continuous development and improvement of a product throughout its lifecycle. The primary objective is to create and sustain value for both users and the business with success measured by customer satisfaction, product adoption, and adherence to strategic business outcomes.

Why the Shift from Project Management to Product Management?

The shift from project management to product management is a strategic move that can enable a company to see many long-term benefits:

Customer-Centricity: Projects often prioritize meeting deadlines and budgets over delivering real customer value, which can result in products that, while completed on time, do not meet user needs or market demands. Product management, especially when aligned with agile product management, places the customer at the center, continuously iterating and improving based on feedback and usage data. This ensures that the product evolves in alignment with user expectations and market trends.

Agility and Flexibility: Projects typically follow a fixed scope and timeline, making it difficult to adapt to changing market conditions or emerging technologies. In contrast, product management embraces an agile methodology, allowing for ongoing adjustments and refinements. This adaptability is crucial in a rapidly changing market environment.

Long-Term Value Creation: Projects are transient, with an emphasis on completing a set of tasks. Once a project ends, the team’s involvement usually diminishes, potentially leading to a lack of ownership and accountability for long-term success. Product management, however, is continuous, focusing on the product’s entire lifecycle. This approach ensures sustained effort toward improvement, maintenance, and innovation, leading to long-term value creation for both customers and the business.

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Projects often operate in silos, with teams working on their specific tasks without a holistic view of the product’s impact on the customer or business. Product management fosters cross-functional collaboration, bringing together different departments such as development, marketing, sales, and customer support. This integrated approach ensures that all aspects of the product are aligned towards common goals.

Market Responsiveness: Projects can suffer from a lack of responsiveness to market changes because of their fixed nature. Product management, being inherently market-driven, continuously gathers and analyzes market data to guide product decisions. This responsiveness helps companies stay competitive and relevant.

Innovation and Iteration: Projects may conclude with the delivery of the initial version of a product, with limited scope for subsequent innovation. Product management, however, supports continuous iteration and innovation. By constantly seeking customer feedback and experimenting with new ideas, product teams can keep the product fresh and competitive.

What Transitioning Looks Like and How Kenway Can Help

Shifting from project management to product management involves significant changes in mindset, skillsets, and processes. The mindset shift requires teams to focus on product outcomes that create sustained value for the customer, rather than project outputs that prioritize business objectives. Investing in product management skills is crucial for this transition, including providing training, hiring experienced product managers, and fostering a collaborative culture that promotes cross-functional teamwork and open communication. Additionally, implementing agile practices enhances flexibility and responsiveness by continuously gathering and analyzing customer feedback, allowing for real-time adjustments to product strategies to ensure alignment with market needs.

At Kenway, we specialize in helping organizations seamlessly transition from project management to product management by designing an operating model that aligns with the required mindset, skillset, and process changes. Our approach begins with a thorough assessment of your current organizational structure to identify areas where project-focused thinking still prevails. We then design a tailored framework that shifts the focus toward customer-driven outcomes, ensuring teams prioritize long-term product value over short-term project outputs. Through workshops, targeted training, and the introduction of product-centric metrics, we help transform the mindset of your teams and align business goals with customer needs.

To develop the necessary skillsets, Kenway will create a customized talent strategy, focusing on upskilling current employees, cultivating top-tier product management talent, and embedding experienced product leaders within your teams. We also facilitate cross-functional collaboration by dismantling organizational silos, fostering open communication, and establishing governance structures that promote teamwork. Additionally, we integrate agile practices across your teams, introducing iterative planning, sprint reviews, and continuous feedback loops to enable real-time adjustments to product strategies. Through this holistic operating model, Kenway ensures that your organization is fully equipped to adopt product management, adapt to market changes, and drive sustained success.

Conclusion

The shift from project management to product management is a strategic move that can significantly enhance a company's ability to deliver value, innovate, and stay competitive in a dynamic market. By focusing on long-term product success rather than short-term project completion, businesses can better meet customer needs, respond to market changes, and drive sustainable growth. The journey may be challenging, but the rewards are well worth the effort. We at Kenway believe it is a shift worth making and we are more than happy to help you on your way. For any further information you or your company may need, do not hesitate to contact us or email us at [email protected] for further help and assistance.

PMO's Gone Wild?

“For more than a decade, PMO’s have been regarded as necessary management structures to ensure project success, which is a critical concern for CIOs. Organizations with a well-planned and well-run PMO generally see a 20% improvement in project results.” - Gartner Analyst

Why is it that something that should drive significant value is so often despised? Is it because the Program Management Office (PMO) is often poorly implemented or executed? Is it because the PMO often fails to deliver the expected value? The Gartner quote notes the improvements that can be achieved by implementing a well-planned and well run PMO; however, what they didn’t measure is the detrimental effect a poorly implemented or poorly run PMO can have on an organization.

It is difficult to argue the potential value that can be delivered through the typical PMO:

Aligning delivery approaches for all projects and work streams
Implementing cross-organization communication strategies to ensure effective collaboration
Providing aggregated status reporting and program-wide rollups
Creating document repositories, issue and risk logs, project plans and project charters
Training organizations on new processes and tools to support the program
Identifying and prioritizing projects
Providing structure for governance and key decision makers (Steering Committees, Sponsors, etc.)

All too often, a PMO is quickly put in place because a new program is up and running and it “feels” like the right thing to do, or because of a knee jerk reaction to some level of disorganization. So, before jumping ahead and setting up a PMO, take a moment to survey the landscape and think through what implementing a PMO will entail:

Define the need. What problems will a PMO help solve?
What is the perceived value of establishing a PMO? Make it measurable so you can evaluate the actual value later.
Define the PMO charter. This includes defining the scope, duration, roles, responsibilities, artifacts, goals, and objectives.
Be sure to determine to whom the PMO answers and how it will be evaluated.
Define the communication strategy. What information needs to bubble up to senior project sponsors, and what messages need to be communicated down?
What is the duration of the PMO? Is the PMO being implemented for an initiative that has an expected end date? Or is the PMO being leveraged to guide a collection of operational projects that will continue for years without a defined end date?
What is the culture of the organization? Nimble and agile or rigorous and structured?
How fast can the “pendulum” of organizational change swing? Are you attempting to move faster than the organization will comfortably allow?

Now, assuming a PMO is right for your organization, a key step to successfully execute a PMO is to regularly validate that the actual value being achieved through implementing the framework matches or exceeds the expected value defined prior to implementation.

While the PMO is often viewed as an overhead cost, a properly functioning one should allow the program as a whole to be far more effective than the sum of its parts (or in this case, projects). A PMO isn’t there to solve all the organization’s ills. It certainly isn’t a panacea. As critical as it is to properly implement the PMO, it is equally important to recognize the danger signs of a PMO that has gone wild.

One of the most prevalent danger signs is that it often goes unchecked and accepted as a necessary evil leaving project team members wondering what value the PMO is adding. Perhaps this goes on for an extended period, and only when budgets are squeezed does the PMO go under the microscope to finally get trimmed and corrected (or as often happens, killed completely). So, you must stop and ask yourself, does your program…:

…have rigorous standards that killed previously productive processes?
…have rigorous standards that crippled effective team dynamics?
…have key decision makers that lack the information they need to make key decisions?
…have project teams that lack the guidance and support they need from the key decision makers to be successful?
…have an abundance of red tape?
…have a hard time explaining why it takes so long to do something relatively simple?

Finally, if your PMO has required that every person on every project complete a status report using the same template, it is time to press the panic button. For one, this implementation has failed to take into account the varying team dynamics that exist, and the varying management styles on each project. This is ruthless standardization for the sake of being ruthless. If the message that is important is the one that the project manager escalates, why must the PMO dictate how the project manager gathers that message? Why not let the project manager determine the best approach for his/her team? Where there is smoke, there is fire. Don’t let your PMO run wild. Pay attention to the danger signs to avoid yet another PMO failure.

Kenway Consulting has developed, managed, and when necessary, disassembled PMOs. We can help you evaluate, plan, and execute a successful PMO. Contact us for more information at [email protected].