Do Project Managers Need to Understand the Product Roadmap?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

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Topics: Product Management

New product development projects can be incredibly diverse. Digital products are continuously improving, fast-moving consumer goods are highly competitive and need to optimize time to market, and specialist products must distinguish themselves in terms of features and pricing. They are also tremendously important for the future of companies.

Operational initiatives focus on minimizing risks and costs, but there is a limit to the savings—there is a minimum level of costs, and a certain level of risks, that can’t be eliminated. However, new product development generates revenue, which can be virtually unlimited when the right products with the right features are launched into the right markets. That makes a big difference to the overall performance of the business.

As a result, organizations must seek out every advantage they can to ensure that their product initiatives succeed. Much of that work happens long before a project manager is ever appointed and the actual development of the product begins. But that doesn’t mean that project managers can’t have a significant impact on the success, or otherwise, of new product development initiatives.

Project managers and the product roadmap
We have seen in recent years how project managers are increasingly expected to be enablers of business performance. For product development, that has to consider not…

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