Product Management and Services

Professional services is the next challenge for product management. In many companies, definition of services is an ad hoc affair, nothing more than a rough guess of man-days committed in a contract. Yet professional services are a key element of the solution delivered to the market. Product management should take on a leadership role in defining repeatable services, creating a market requirements document for each type of deliverable.

Development and Product Management are about serving entire markets instead of individual clients. The best approach is to think of Professional Services as a development organization. PSO uses onsite man-hours instead of a compiler. The trick is to deliver the same thing in every similar engagement, leaving room for customization.