This document discusses where to place the role of Product Manager within an organization's structure. It analyzes placing the role in Marketing, R&D, and Professional Services. Marketing provides market analysis but can be externally focused. R&D understands technical strengths but can be internally focused. Professional Services understands customer implementations but can be too tactical. The document recommends initially placing Product Management under Marketing to address market perception issues, then cultivating influence from R&D and Professional Services without being dominated by them. The goal is differentiating the product while understanding customer needs and technical capabilities.

1. Product Management
Organizational Structure to Maximize Impact

2. Where should the role of Product
Manager be placed?
Marketing
R&D
Professional
Services

3. Marketing
 Pros:
 Market analysis/driven
 Can speak the jargon and
monitors industry trends
 Can usually create great,
visually-oriented
documentation/collateral
 Cons:
 Usually too externally focused
 Easy to get disconnected from
operations and delivery
 Often seen as too much flash
and too little substance
Placing the Project Management function
within the Marketing Organization is the most
common location. This spot is great for sales
driven organizations, but often causes
enormous contention internally, and requires
some balancing to be managed well.

4. Research & Development
 Pros:
 Strong roots in existing product strengths
and weaknesses -- often easier to
find/pick-off low hanging fruit and
enhance existing or related features
already present in product
 Drive towards a strong internal strategic
vision of the product and future plans for
positioning
 Build strong relationships with technical
teams, and help cultivate their ideas into
new and unique features
 Cons:
 Easy to become too internally focused
and not paying enough attention to
competition/market trends
 Can be seen as too tech and not enough
marketing -- down to the development of
good marketing collateral
 Just because something is a logical
technical choice doesn't mean there is a
market for it, driving from inside the
product can stunt growth and miss
market-driven opportunities
Placing the Product Management function in
the R&D team is most often done in heavily
technical environments that devote
considerable resources to coming up with
new ideas and technologies. This is a good
place to put the role if a company is looking
to build something completely original that
the market has never seen before,
when/where market disruption is the key.

5. Professional Services
 Pros:
 The more a PM understands how
customers are using the product, what
they like, what they don't like, the
easier/better it is to drive improvements
 Close alignment with PS can help with
better implementations, scoping and
fueling the product roadmap
 Since projects usually run off the rails
during implementation, having product
improvement opportunities driven from
an implementation perspective can help
drive time-to-market efficiencies with
implementations
 Cons:
 Too easy to get pulled into daily project
fires instead of staying out of the mix
and focusing on the future
 Easy to get focused on what current
clients are doing instead of monitoring
the market and competitors
 Role gets too tactical and not strategic
enough
Placing the Product Management function in
Professional Services is rare, but not unheard
of. It is a logical place to put the role in
client-driven organizations that lack
sufficient management oversight in other
areas. The tactical nature of this
organization is rarely seen as the optimal
location for a strategic function like product
vision, however, because they often (should)
have different viewpoints.

6. Placing the Product Manager Function
 My recommendation would be to put
PM under Marketing in the early
stages, for the following reasons:
 External focus is key for organization
to address perception issues in the
market about solution offering
 Unique nature of the product
requires evaluating competitive
space differently to slice across
relevant market spheres
 “Pretty” counts and some polished
style on top of the already-existing
substance will help speak to the
issues product has struggled with to
date in competitive situations.
 Mitigating the Challenges of this
structure would require
considering/addressing the following:
 Cultivating yet not antagonizing the
natural tug-of-war that exists (and
which should exist) between Product
and Professional Services.
 Driving the collection of product
feedback from both PS teams (on
implementations) and clients (on
features and functions), and folding
them into the roadmap.
 Getting deep enough into R&D to
understand the technical strengths
and weaknesses, but staying removed
enough to balance that against the
outside world’s expectations and
competitive landscape.

7. Ways to Balance the Influence
Marketing
R&D
Professional
Services
Recommended Product
Management influences:
• 50% Marketing
• 30% R&D
• 20% Professional Services

8. Influence Mix on Product Management
 Differentiating the product from the rest of the market is key – but not
enough. The Product Manager also needs to know why it’s different and then
help develop the language that makes those differences clear to prospects
and the market at large.
 R&D and PS should have HUGE inputs into the direction of the product, but
they should NOT be the tails that wag the dog. R&D and PS are reflective of
what has been done to date above all else – not about the vision for the
future. Underlying technical capabilities (R&D) and client wants/needs (PS)
should be seriously considered, but not at the expense of the rest of the
outside world.
 The individual strengths, weaknesses, affinities and sympathies of a particular
candidate will heavily influence how this truly plays out. The above
recommendation is made without candidate-specifics in consideration.