A topic that we covered briefly in our recent webinar on Agile trends is the rise of software product management as a discipline in insurer organizations. The idea of product management is not new to the industry—many carriers have product management groups focused on their insurance products and also encounter product management specialists when working with software vendors.
But it is still uncommon for carriers to consider their IT systems as products, and even less common for them to apply product management oversight to them.
Product managers oversee products throughout their full life cycle. They are most common in organizations that sell products, where they focus on product development, product marketing, or both depending on the size of the product and company.
Product managers are responsible for the overall success of their product, where success means a product that meets its goals in the target market. They understand the needs of their customers/users, define features to support them, and develop, maintain, and communicate a product roadmap that spans multiple releases. They decide what to implement, when, and how. In smaller organizations, they may also serve as the Agile product owner, developing user stories and working with the engineering teams to build features and deliver the releases on the roadmap. In larger organizations, product managers and product owners are distinct roles that together support the product development process.
There are a number of converging reasons for the growth in product management at carriers. One is that the role of the product manager is defined by some of the Agile scaling frameworks like SAFe. Another is the continued evolution of Agile and DevOps, where focus has shifted from organizing around projects with neat start and end points to focusing on products, where consistent vision must be maintained over an entire life cycle.
Perhaps the biggest factor is the increasing role of digital innovation in insurance. To be successful in the digital realm, the traditional methods used by insurers to identify, prioritize, and specify what to build come up short. Strong product management is increasingly necessary to accomplish digital goals effectively. Once carriers recognize the value it brings in the digital domain, they often extend the scope of the practice to other IT systems, including core and data.
The product manager is sometimes referred to as “CEO of the product” to reflect their role in guiding the overall direction of the product. As well as cross-functional experience in software development, business, and user experience (UX), product managers should be leaders in the organization. They must also be well supported and appropriately empowered to be successful. Product management is often established in a dedicated organization with its own executive representation for that reason.
We’ll be delving into product management more in future research, including in an upcoming brief on buy vs. build for large systems.
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