Challenges in product management- Indian context

Abstract

The origins of the field of Product management find its roots way back in the twentieth century. Originally the domain of product management was intended to ensure that someone within the company would provide customer's voice in the FMCG companies (Eriksson, 2019). However, through the years, the role has taken many different forms. The contemporary form of the field of Software Product Management owes a great deal to the Agile Manifesto, which 17 software engineers in the US wrote. Since the 2010s, Product Management has come on its own as a domain and has its position separate from marketing and engineering. Today the domain has taken a broader definition wherein Product Management is defined as the role and function within an organization that is responsible for a product's overall success. (Product Management Definition, 2021) With the further development of the field as well as an increase in the complexity of the software products, the challenges faced by a Product Manager are increasing. These vary from identifying the right problems in the product to keeping the communication channels within and outside the team robust. Maglyas et al. (2012) identified some of the common problems like long release cycle, short-term thinking, trying to change instantly and insufficient user research related to software product management in the European context. We believe there is a need for such a study in the Indian context as the culture specific aspects are important, and also because of the recent increase in the scope of product managers due to their high interaction with stakeholders and high expectations from senior leaders in the company. Thus, such research in the Indian context will be valuable to the current companies in software product management by first making cognizant of the important issues that need to be dealt with and then addressing them effectively.