A week ago we kicked off our 5th annual study of product teams. This year’s study is sponsored by our partners; Accelerance, Planbox and Project Connections.
Our continuing market research enjoys the support of a growing list of promotional partners who encourage product team members to take part in the global survey and help us get the word out on our findings.
This year’s promo partners include:
- The Boston Product Management Association (BPMA)
- The Chicago Product Management Association (ChiPMA)
- Orange County Product Managers (OCPM)
- The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA Chicago)
- The American Society for the Advancement of Project Management (asapm/IPMA USA)
- Engineering Leadership Meetup Group in the San Francisco Bay Area
- Silicon Valley Code Camp
- The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA)
- Silicon Valley Engineering Leadership Community
- Singapore Product Camp (Ravi Kumar and team)
You are no doubt wondering why so many different groups support this effort. The answer is that our study enables us, collectively, to uncover great data that is meaningful to product executives and product team members. Once the survey is complete we share the data with an independent statistician who conducts regression analysis. The result of this regression analysis are factors that are highly corrolated with high performance on product teams. We also uncover trends.
A Telling Trend
2015 Actuation Consulting, all rights reserved.
This first illustration displays product development methodology adoption rates for the last four years. As you can see, Blended methods (combining Agile and Waterfall) continue to dominate in terms of usage. Popular belief would lead one to believe that Agile methods currently rule but the fact is last year’s data illustrated a decline in Agile adoption for the very first time since we began tracking adoption rates.
What Exactly Is Product Management Accountable For?
Or consider this graphic which illustrates the metrics that product managers are held accountable to. Respondents tell us that the primary metric used by their organizations’ to track a product managers performance is customer satisfaction. We believe that this is due to the fact that previous studies showed only 19% of product managers have profit and loss responsibility. Less in the technology realm. What is most concerning is that the second highest number is actually “our product managers are not held accountable to any metric.” The remainder of the metrics are tied to revenue, profitability, market share and velocity. All hover from the high twenties to the high teens in percentages.
A Trend in the Making?
Finally, we asked respondents to tell us about where user experience professionals functionally report within their organizations. Our findings are illustrated in the pie chart. Engineering, development and technology currently has the edge with product management following closely behind. However, when we asked a follow-on question regarding “where UX professionals should report to be most effective” we got a different answer. Respondents told us, by a wide margin, that ux pros should report into product (either the product management function or the Chief Product Officer (CPO)).
We Want to Hear From You
All of these findings are from our 2015 study and that white paper is still available. If you have 7 minutes to invest we would like to encourage you to take the new survey in which we explore a whole host of topics ranging from product development methods, requirements management, outsourcing trends, user experience and many more.
We not only want to hear from you – but if you choose to fill out the survey – you will be among the first to receive a copy of the 2016 white paper as a thank you! We are also randomly drawing for a $200 gift card as well.
We hope to hear how you and your product team are performing! (Your responses will be kept strictly confidential.)
Advancing the Profession of Product Management™
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