Episode 238: Managing Success Beyond the Build
In this episode, Melissa Perri tackles a vital topic for product managers working in environments where building products from scratch isn't always the norm. With the rise of SaaS tools in large enterprises, Melissa explores the critical role product managers play in ensuring these tools are effectively implemented, customized, and aligned with business needs. This episode dives into the complexities of using pre-built tools and the essential product management tasks that accompany them.
Melissa delves into the decision-making process between building versus buying, highlighting how even purchased tools require rigorous product management to meet company objectives and solve customer problems. She provides actionable insights for product managers on how to effectively advocate for their role in leveraging SaaS tools to achieve competitive advantages.
Curious about how product managers can thrive in a SaaS-dominated landscape and drive value for their organizations? Listen to the full episode for expert advice and strategies.
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Episode Transcript:
PreRoll: [00:00:00] Creating great products isn't just about product managers and their day to day interactions with developers. It's about how an organization supports products as a whole. The systems, the processes, and cultures in place that help companies deliver value to their customers. With the help of some boundary pushing guests and inspiration from your most pressing product questions, we'll dive into this system from every angle and help you find your way.
Think like a great product leader. This is the product thinking podcast. Here's your host, Melissa Perri.
Melissa Perri: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Product Thinking Podcast. It's time for Dear Melissa. We go into deep questions from our listeners every single week, and you can submit yours at dearmelissa.com.
This week's question is all about what it's like to be a product manager. For a product that you didn't necessarily build one that was bought by the company and implemented. So let's dive [00:01:00] in.
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Dear Melissa
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Melissa Perri: Dear Melissa, my team supports enterprise service management across a very large enterprise using a SaaS tool.
We are split into four product teams and suffer from many of the shortcomings of product teams that create their own products. We have product owners who are expected to do many of the things you discuss as a product manager role, and our product managers are just their supervisors. Ultimately we have ended up being a feature factory because our pos don't have good training materials that show them what good product management looks like.
I tried sharing your talks, books, and ideas with leaders with most saying [00:02:00] stuff like "This stuff is for companies that make and sell products. It doesn't apply to us because we don't own the tool."
Do you think that topics discussed in Escaping the Build Trap and your other materials can apply to us as well?
How could someone in my position help leadership see the light? While we do use a SaaS tool, I see our product as being the service we offer, so I think it still applies. Please help.
Melissa’s Answer
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Melissa Perri: All right. Great question, and one that I do run into from teams that buy software and implement it rather than build it themselves.
And there are so many teams out there that do this in every large enterprise. A lot of the companies are just buying SaaS software and then implementing it. But there are teams out there that have to go and customize it and make sure that it works for their situation, and that involves product management.
So we have to remember that even if we are not building this tool from scratch ourselves, we still need to figure out does this tool solve the problem? What problem are we actually [00:03:00] solving with this tool? What teams are going to be using it? What do we need to add to it or customize it? Is it actually like fit for purpose?
There's a lot of work that goes into it, and that's the core of product management. So many companies are out there extending different tools. They're really understanding like how their people are using it. And we're also thinking about, is this something that, is core to our business where we need to innovate and actually add onto this tool, or, make it a little bit better for our needs because it helps us with our position in the market?
Or does it affect our internal processes in a way where we do have to go back and think about, is this right? Is this the way that we actually wanna operate? So that's, that's really product management, right? You are owning this tool and you're figuring out is it solving the right problem for our customers?
Build vs. buy and the role of PMs
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Melissa Perri: And that's a build verse buy decision. So in product management we, we talk all the time about build verse buy. Should we just buy this tool from a company because somebody else has solved that problem and it will work well for us, or should we build it ourselves? And just because you're [00:04:00] buying a tool doesn't mean that you're not doing product management around it.
Like I said, figuring out, do we extend it? Is it solving the problem? You still have to do all of that. Set the goals. Understand your customers, follow up with them, see if it's actually working for them. And I've had people come to me and tell me how when they implemented the wrong tools or bought the wrong tools, there were huge detriments to the company. In one organization, I had a girl tell me that they put this new tool in for developers and the developers threatened to quit because they did not like it, right? They didn't understand their needs. They did not figure out if this was the right tool for them, and then that caused them to go, oh, we have to, we're not gonna be here anymore.
And then once the developers started to threaten with that, they went back and they reevaluated and decided that they were gonna go with a different tool. That's product management, right? Even if you're integrating it into your systems or not, it's still product management. Product management is about discovering the right solutions to the right problems, and it doesn't matter if you own that tool [00:05:00] from a perspective of, I built it or not, you still own it.
You still own the success of that tool. So that's what we really have to look at.
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Now, I'll give you an example.
Customizing tools for competitive advantage
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Melissa Perri: There's one that a lot of pharmaceutical companies use a SaaS tool that they get right out of the box that helps run clinical trials. There's a bunch of tools out there that can do this.
If you're bringing that into a pharmaceutical company as a technology person and implementing it, you also wanna look at the tool and say, Hey, our clinical trial is something for us that we really wanna figure out how to do differently than just what this tool suggests. Or does it give us a [00:06:00] competitive advantage over our other customers?
Now, if you're not looking at that from a product management perspective, you might be missing out on something that could really allow you to succeed against other pharmaceutical companies who might be using the same tool, right? That's product management. That's thinking, is this the right solution for what we wanna do?
Maybe certain parts of that are fit for purpose. Maybe other parts aren't. So maybe you have to actually build other parts of the product and integrate it into that SaaS solution or whatever you're using. Maybe you have to go back to the company and fight to get what you need to make your people more successful internally put into that product, right?
Practicing good product management without building
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Melissa Perri: All of that actually comes back to product management. So you might not be using all of the tools in the product management toolbox, let's say, as somebody who's building custom software, but you're still going through these steps. You're still understanding my users and their needs. You're understanding the goals of the company.
You're defining the problem that you're actually trying to solve. You're determining what would [00:07:00] solve that problem in the right way. You are experimenting or testing out these solutions or acquiring the right solutions to figure out how to do just that, solve that problem. And then you're measuring success.
And then if you're not successful, you're iterating in changing course. That's what good product management looks like. So if you are trying to convince your leadership that we still need great product management and this is how we need to operate. What I would encourage you to do is go back to those basic principles.
Go back to the steps of product management, and when you get to the BI part, put that out there. Is this the right solution for us? Is it solving our needs? If not, what can we do to actually make it better? Should we buy a different solution? Should we be building our own? Should we try to, maybe they have an API, you can integrate into it, with some of your custom software. Does it help you succeed? That's what you wanna look at, whether you own that product or not. That's the big question in product management. So at the end of the day, you are still doing product [00:08:00] management. Even if you don't build that tool yourself, even if you're integrating other things, you have to figure out how to do that seamlessly.
The whole scope, as you talked about, is the product, right? The services with that tool is the product. How do you optimize for that? And then how do you make sure that the software you do have is the right thing to solve those problems? So I hope that helps with your question, and I wish you the best of luck in helping your leadership see the light.
So if you have any other questions for me, go to dear melissa.com and I'll answer them on next Friday's episode. We're looking forward to splitting out these Dear Melissa episodes Going forward, going a little bit more in detail, but we'll still have our guest episodes every Wednesday, so make sure you like and subscribe so that you never miss one of these episodes.
We'll be back next Wednesday with another guest and I look forward to reading all your questions. Go to product thinking podcast.com to submit them and to learn more.