Value of Product Management

Marty Cagan sums this up pretty nicely in the podcast episode: Product Management Theater.

Over the years, I’ve spoken with hundreds of product managers through my work at Beyond. I care deeply about the industry, so I decided to create content to help product managers who feel stuck or don’t know where to start. My goal is to share practical ideas on what product management should truly be: bringing value to users and companies.

This article is an introduction to what value looks like and how to discover and create it in modern organizations. I’m not reinventing the wheel, but I aim to make this topic clear and actionable.

So, what value should product managers bring? It’s not about delivering features. Features are just potential solutions for creating value, but their delivery (= output) shouldn’t be the main focus. The focus should be on solving real customer problems that lead to changes in behavior, e.g., more visits, actions, or retention. These changes build stronger customer connections and drive sales (= outcome).

Cagan highlights a major issue: teams often prioritize output over outcomes, wasting effort on things that don’t matter. Why? It’s easier to design, code, and release something. The process is linear and gives a sense of accomplishment. It feels good to showcase shiny new features in updates and move on. However, if these features don’t solve real problems or deliver results, they’re useless. Weeks of effort end up wasted, even though it feels productive.

Value Exploration

How can you avoid the “trap of building”? What should a product manager do to make an impact? Let’s break it down.

First, understand what value means for the business. Every company, industry, and stage has different priorities. These may change over time with strategy shifts. If your company lacks direction (which is common), explore how success is measured.

If the focus is only on making money, find out what users value when they buy your service. Then, learn how your company gains value from happy users. This understanding is critical.

Once you know your customers, market, and how the company creates value, you can focus on your team’s responsibilities. Too many PMs jump straight into features or solutions without considering the big picture. This limits their ability to create meaningful impact.

To summarize

• Understand your customers and market deeply.
• Learn what value means for the business beyond revenue.
• Study how the business currently creates value.
• Find out what happy customers value and why they return.
• Validate problems of current and potential customers.
• Identify opportunities to solve these problems and create value.
• Prioritize opportunities aligned with business goals and customer impact.

Let’s call these steps “value exploration.” In future posts, I’ll dive deeper into effective ways to explore potential value. If you’re curious now, search for “continuous product discovery” or “product kata.”

Product Discovery vs. Value Exploration

Seasoned PMs might think, “This sounds a lot like product discovery.” That’s partly true, but I believe calling it product discovery limits its scope.

Here’s why: product discovery often implies focusing only on the product, finding the next feature for users. Value exploration goes beyond that. It’s about understanding the broader landscape: the business model, market dynamics, go-to-market strategy, metrics, and flywheels. These are critical for creating value.

To master value exploration, you need experience with different companies, models, strategies, and experiments. Learn from case studies and develop pattern recognition skills.

Understanding the big picture is essential, even if your current role doesn’t require it. Sit with sales reps, read user forums, and talk to your CFO about value creation. These steps will broaden your perspective and improve your skills as a PM. I’ll share more tips in future articles.

Value Creation

Once you understand value in your context, use your team’s abilities to create it for both the business and customers. This is often called product delivery, but I think it’s more than that.

Value creation means maximizing value for the company and customers with the resources you have. It’s about serving the needs of both as quickly and effectively as possible.

By understanding the company’s needs, how it works, and who its customers are, you can make informed predictions about the future.

In many companies, this is where you’re handed a list of features to build. These lists are essentially hypotheses: “Build X, and Y will happen.” The issue is that this assumes leadership has done its homework, talked to users, understood the business, and found the best solution. If that’s the case, you don’t need a PM, just a project manager to execute.

But in companies that empower product teams, you’re given clear direction, a problem to solve, and success criteria. This is where the real work starts.

Value creation isn’t about checking off tasks or quickly shipping features. It’s about what changes as a result. Do customers complete tasks faster? Does the company save money or resources?

Your product is part of a larger system. Changes have ripple effects. These effects are often more important than individual features for creating lasting value.

Focus on outcomes. Delivery is just one way to achieve them. If you can create the same or better outcome without shipping code, don’t ship code.

Empowered Teams

How well you perform as a PM depends on how your organization values your contributions. We often talk about feature teams vs. empowered teams, but it’s more nuanced. It’s about knowing what you’re responsible for and what leadership handles. Trust and communication are key.

Leadership must develop good strategies and communicate them effectively. Otherwise, they’re no better than handing down feature lists. Both PMs and leaders need accountability.

Ideally, you work in a learning culture where outcomes and failures are openly discussed. In reality, though, organizations rarely allow many mistakes or pivots. Future articles will explore how PMs can foster healthy cultures through better communication.

The approach will vary based on your organization’s challenges, customers, and market. But in the end, creating value is always a team effort.