Product Management

From ideation to launch, we help you develop and refine products that meet market demands and delight your customers.

Our Approach

When entering a new organization, our Product Management consultant will begin with an intensive discovery period focused on three critical dimensions:

• Product strategy
• Market fit
• Organizational alignment and capabilities

The Product Manager’s approach will be strategic, collaborative, and tailored to the organization’s unique needs.

The Product Manager will take care to observe team dynamics and working styles before suggesting any process changes, recognizing that successful product management requires both organizational insight and technical expertise.

The Product Manager will work to establish clear lines of communication, setting expectations for status updates, escalation procedures, and decision-making protocols; rather than imposing a rigid methodology immediately, the Product Manager will adapt their approach to match the organization’s maturity level and specific needs, introducing more sophisticated product management practices incrementally as the team develops.

Our Methodology

Phase 1 - Discovery

Our product management consultants follow a systematic methodology to integrate with an organization’s existing product management framework (if a framework exists).

If no product management framework exists, the Product Manager will bring a standard Matador Consulting methodology to the engagement, which is strongly based on industry-standard Agile methodologies.

In the first phase of activity, the Product Manager will:

• Organize deep-dive sessions with key stakeholders to understand business objectives, current technical capabilities, team capabilities and immediate pain points to create a comprehensive picture of the current state.
• Immerse themselves in the product, understanding its features, technical architecture, and current roadmap.
• Conduct a comprehensive review of the organization’s established methodologies, templates, governance structures, and reporting requirements, including studying the organization’s product lifecycle phases, gate review processes, and documentation standards to ensure seamless alignment with existing practices.
• Get hands-on product usage, review analytics and metrics, examine the backlog, and understand the product’s evolution through its release history.
• Schedule detailed orientation sessions with product leadership to understand specific expectations around methodology application, including critical success factors, common pitfalls, and any recent updates to processes.

By facilitating workshops, meetings, and open forums, the Product Manager will create opportunities for transparent communication and increased organizational alignment.

Phase 2 - Initial Execution

During the second phase, the Product Manager will:

• Create a product roadmap (or update a roadmap if one exists) that explicitly maps to the organization’s product methodology.
• Work to identify quick wins that can demonstrate value while developing a deeper strategic vision for the product.
• Focus on building strong relationships across engineering, design, sales, marketing, and customer success teams.
• Conduct a thorough review of customer feedback, support tickets, sales conversations, and user research to understand current pain points and unmet needs.
• Analyze competitive positioning, market trends, and key differentiators while building relationships with customers to gather firsthand insights.
• Map out decision-making processes, communication channels, and development workflows while understanding team dynamics and cultural nuances, with special attention paid to understanding how product decisions are currently made, including prioritization frameworks, resource allocation processes, and success metrics.
• Review key business metrics, including revenue models, customer acquisition costs, and retention rates to understand the product’s business performance.

Phase 3 - Ongoing Execution and Continuous Improvement

The third phase of the methodology involves the Product Manager:

• Putting in place processes to ensure roadmaps are kept up to date as the product progresses.
• Participating in product management community of practice sessions, contributing insights while maintaining consistency with established approaches.
• Maintaining detailed documentation that follows organizational product management conventions, facilitating easy integration with the organization’s product management systems and enabling effective knowledge transfer.

By actively managing products within the organization’s product management framework, and providing feedback on methodology effectiveness through designated channels, the Product Manager will contribute to continuous improvement while respecting the existing framework.