Alexander Sandstrom

With just a few days left of 2015 it is time to wrap up the product management trends of the year. What were some of the new ideas, talking points and discussions that shaped product management in 2015?

My thoughts and conclusions are based on discussions I’ve participated in, blog posts I’ve read and stuff I’ve done in my role as a product manager. In no particular order I am covering roadmaps without dates, the relevance of user experience, product decisions becoming data driven and launching on Product Hunt. Finally there are a few notes on the role of product managers, a never-ending discussion that was as vigorous as ever during 2015.

Building business cases as input to product planning and investment decisions are part of what most product managers do. Monetary values are easy to grasp and simple to compare. But business cases are only numbers. And just like statistics they can be altered to show whatever you want them to show.

Taking the time to work through business case assumptions and calculations has tremendous value if done right. And done right means done with focus on thinking, researching and analyzing. Not with focus on adjusting it until it “looks good”.

Henry Ford famously said “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” (or did he really?).

Our favorite entrepreneur Steve Jobs also famously said “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” as well as “The customer never knows what they want until we show them”.

User experience has historically been a field focused on solutions targeting consumers. But when how you use products at work no longer differ from how you use them at home, user experience obviously becomes important also for business users. I don’t want the web sites I visit to suck, the phone I carry to suck, or the software I use to suck, simply because I am in the office.