Building Products for the Enterprise: Product Management in Enterprise Software

by Blair Reeves

In most high-functioning organizations, other teams rely on Product to help them do their jobs more effectively. Development relies on product management to define a plan and write user stories, requirements, and acceptance criteria that explain what needs to be built. Marketing relies on Product for product information, value proposition definitions, business case material, market intelligence and, sometimes, content. Sales relies on Product for much of the same, plus determining target market segments, demo cases, answering detailed inquiries, and helping to close deals. Finance and Product rely on each other to build the business through determining pricing, margins, discounting, and so forth. Leadership relies on Product for execution on overall product and business strategy. Across all of these cases, Product is the key index and what keeps all of them churning toward the same destination.