Product Management Trends to Look For in 2022
2021 has been a year to get through with hopes of better times, as well as an opportunity for change. What will 2022 bring? More of the same or the unexpected? Product management is an ever-evolving field, and in this post we will consider some areas in which there may well be an opportunity to advance the practice and discipline of product management in the coming year.
Just When You Thought Things Were Getting Back to Normal
The COVID pandemic will continue in 2022 and we can expect to continue to adapt our personal and work lives to this new reality. The challenge is to accept and move forward. Remote work will continue, perhaps to become a permanent feature of our work lives. We must adapt and make the most of the situation. Remote work has offered us the opportunity, for example, to institute a daily exercise regimen, and we’ve never felt better! In addition, the odometers on our cars have hardly budged. We have enjoyed being spared the psychic wear-and-tear of the daily commute.
Employers are realizing benefits as well, in the form of reduced overhead expenses, the most substantive being rent. Online collaboration tools like Zoom, Teams, Jira, Slack, and others have made the remote work model work. What can your company do to contribute to this shift in the work paradigm. Can remote capability be incorporated into your product, increasing value and utility for your customers? Is this a realistic market expansion strategy? And for you personally, is there an opportunity to take advantage of the staff shortages that the pandemic has engendered? Maybe a new and more exciting challenge (both financial and career) awaits you next year. Making the most of a bad situation is how we humans survive and thrive. What does 2022 hold in store for you?
Give it Away, and They Will Come
Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a strategy/philosophy that is gaining traction among product companies and is expected to continue to do so in 2022. But what is it and how does it work? In fact, it sounds like the strategy that product management and product marketing professionals have pursued for years. PLG is predicated on the assumption that today’s B2B software consumers are very sophisticated and demanding. If your product doesn’t meet their exacting standards, doesn’t provide an outstanding customer experience, there is always another vendor whose software might. The Product-Led Growth Collective defines PLG as follows:
“Product-led growth (PLG) is a business methodology in which user acquisition, expansion, conversion, and retention are all driven primarily by the product itself. It creates company-wide alignment across teams—from engineering to sales and marketing—around the product as the largest source of sustainable, scalable business growth.”
According to the Product-Led Growth Collective, “Sales-led and marketing-led growth had their time. The future is product-led growth.” Sounds bold. Time will tell how true an assertion this turns out to be, and in 2022 we may well know more about future of PLG.
Product Management in the Wild and Woolly Internet
Conversion rates. Click rates. Page views. Time on site. These and many other metrics are readily available to product managers and product marketing managers. We are able to collect almost any information we might desire about our prospects and customers. Where to draw the line? 2021 shone a spotlight on corporate misuse of personally identifiable information (PII) with reports on the practices of large social media companies. These and other organizations are continuing to exploit the Internet’s ability to invade personal lives to the benefit of sales and marketing organizations, while at the same time data security protocols such as GDPR are being devised and deployed that seek to protect personal data. Who will win? Stay tuned.
Climate Change and Product Management
Simply put, will 2022 bring a new age of ethical standards that require all product development to be mindful of and focused on not contributing to and perhaps fighting climate change. Time is running out. Shouldn’t we all do our part? What will 2022 bring and will product management organizations embrace this imperative?
Product Management and Data-Driven Development
AI-based analytics and big data are becoming more and more prevalent in the corporate decision-making process. There is a wealth of data available to the product manager and that trend will continue to grow. What current skills does the product manager need to leverage to exploit that data in 2022 and what additional skills should product managers consider acquiring – Tableau, Python, Excel?
See you in 2022!!
