Gartner Research

Critical Steps for Product Managers: Define the Solution

Published: 26 June 2023

Summary

Conflicting stakeholder opinions often result in solution definitions full of compromises. Product managers must prioritize product investments using quantitative data backed by qualitative customer feedback and ensure the resulting solution definition is accurately interpreted by developers.

Included in Full Research

Overview

Key Findings
  • Product managers often underutilize data as a basis of prioritizing product investments or rely too heavily on data without direct customer feedback to validate insights.

  • Engineering must often interpret how to create the desired solution solely from basic product requirements or user stories, lacking the greater context needed to build the most impactful solution.

  • Product managers often fail to prioritize and emphasize the company’s or products’ differentiating capabilities among other features when communicating the solution definition to developers.

Recommendations

Product managers responsible for defining the product or service as part of product design and creation must:

  • Apply a blended approach to

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Analysts:

Dan Tolan

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