Enterprise Product Management: How to Run Product in Large Organizations

Welcome to the intricately complex world of enterprise product management, where the stakes are high, and the scope is massive.

Broadly speaking, there are two realities when it comes to enterprise product management – either you are the Admiral at the helm of not just one, but a whole fleet of products, each with its own course and destination. Or you are the Captain of a single vessel that must navigate the seas as part of an entire armada. That’s enterprise product management for you.

If you’re in charge of the whole fleet, you’re responsible for the course, safety, and good working order of a whole load of different classes of ships, some fresh out of dry dock and others a few days from being scuttled. You’ve got a bigger theatre of operations, more diverse crews to please, and a whole lot of moving parts that need to work together seamlessly to avoid the torpedoes and icebergs, and enemy fleets just waiting for you to slip up.

If you’re Captain of one ship within that fleet, then you’ve got unique challenges to overcome too. You can’t happily sail off into the sunset, a lone yacht charting its own course. You’re part of a squadron of products that must all play their part to win the war.

This isn’t your usual product management gig. Here, product cycles are more like marathons than a race to the finish line. You’re playing a long game, integrating products into complex systems and juggling more tech debt and constraints. And with a larger cast of stakeholders and customers, aligning everyone’s expectations with the company’s goals is part of your daily hustle.

ALL the Product Managers

Of course, I’ve rather over-simplified to say there are only two realities when, in fact, there are quite a few other flavors of Product Managers in enterprise organizations. If a product is big enough, and the team large enough, you might well find yourself as the Product Manager for just one area of one product.

For example, you might have a Product Manager responsible for growing a particular product, while another could be honing the strategy and delivery for an API, while a third oversees the entire product line and all of the other PMs working on it.

In short, you’re likely to be one of many Product Managers when it comes to enterprise product management.

How does enterprise product management differ from standard product management?

Whether you are one of those Product Managers looking after a single area of a product, a single product, or a whole portfolio, there are a number of consistent differences you’ll experience doing any sort of product management within an enterprise organization. 

Here’s the lowdown on what changes when moving into enterprise product management:

First up, everything’s on a grander scale. You’re dealing with longer timeframes and more complex product cycles. Why? Because integrating with existing systems and processes in a big organization is like trying to change the tires on a moving bus. You need to be extra careful not to disrupt anything that’s already in motion.

Then, there’s the people aspect. Your job can’t just be about the products anymore. You’ve got a whole crowd of stakeholders to charm and a diverse bunch of customers to understand. Managing these relationships and aligning everyone’s vision can easily become a huge part of your day. Sure, you were involved with stakeholder management before, but, just as the scale of the business grows, so does the number of people you have to keep happy to get your job done.

And let’s not forget the red tape. In a large enterprise, you often find yourself navigating a maze of compliance and security, especially in sectors like healthcare, finance, and government. It’s a whole different ball game where every move needs to be calculated and justified.

Product management in a large enterprise involves quite a few unique considerations, whether you’re managing a single product or in charge of multiple products. The scale of operations, stakeholder complexity, and strategic objectives differ significantly from those in smaller organizations.

Managing a single product in an enterprise

Let’s talk about what it’s like to manage just one product in a huge company. It’s a bit different from handling a product in a smaller setup. Here, we’ll take a look at the kind of tasks and obstacles you might face, and how your job involves thinking about the bigger company picture while focusing on your product.

Responsibilities

Managing a single product in an enterprise might sound straightforward, but it’s packed with responsibilities that are unique to a large company environment. It’s about aligning your product with some pretty big business goals and getting different parts of a large organization to work together.

Let’s break down what you’d typically be responsible for in this role, from strategic planning to ensuring your product hits all the right notes with customers.

• Strategic planning: Developing and aligning the product strategy with the enterprise’s broader goals, ensuring that the product contributes significantly to the overall business objectives.
• Resource management: Handling more resources and justifying their usage, making decisions on allocation and prioritization that impact the product’s success and the company’s bottom line.
• Cross-departmental collaboration: Working closely with various departments such as Marketing, Sales, and R&D, ensuring that all aspects of the product are harmonized and working towards common goals.
• Customer insight and feedback integration: Deeply understanding customer needs and feedback, integrating these insights into the product strategy and process to ensure the product meets market demands.
• Performance monitoring and reporting: Regularly tracking and reporting on the product’s performance against key metrics, providing insights to leadership, and adjusting strategies as needed.

Challenges

Even when you’re just focusing on one product in a massive company, the challenges can still be daunting. You’re dealing with complex structures, meeting the needs of diverse stakeholders, and making sure your product stays relevant to the portfolio as a whole.

Here’s a closer look at the hurdles you might face and how they differ from managing products in smaller settings:

• Organizational complexity: In large companies, product managers have to navigate intricate organizational structures. This often involves dealing with multiple layers of management, inter-departmental dependencies, and complex decision-making processes. Unlike smaller organizations where decisions might be more direct and streamlined, in large enterprises, gaining consensus and moving your projects forward can require some pretty extensive coordination and negotiation.
• Stakeholder management: Balancing the needs and expectations of a diverse group of stakeholders is more challenging in a large enterprise setting. You’re not just catering to your immediate team and customers but also to various internal departments and product teams, external partners, and possibly global markets. This differs from smaller organizations where stakeholder groups are usually more limited and homogeneous, making it easier to align interests and goals.
• Maintaining market responsiveness: Staying agile and responsive in a large organization is a complex task. Adapting to market changes, consumer trends, and technological advancements while ensuring the product remains relevant requires a delicate balance. In smaller organizations, changes can often be implemented more swiftly due to less bureaucratic inertia and simpler operational frameworks.
• Rapid technological adaptation: Staying ahead in technology integration and innovation is crucial in large enterprises. You need to ensure that your product not only adopts the latest technological advancements but also integrates seamlessly with existing corporate systems and standards. This challenge is generally less daunting in smaller organizations, where product and technology frameworks might be more flexible and adaptable, and so quicker to keep up with changes.
• Change management: Effectively managing changes within the product’s scope in a large enterprise involves comprehensive planning and coordination. You need to carefully consider various factors to ensure smooth transitions and minimal disruption, like legacy systems, ongoing operations, and stakeholder expectations. Meanwhile, smaller organizations often have the advantage of quicker implementation and less complex operational impacts when introducing changes.

Differences from standard product management

Managing a single product in a big company is not the same as doing it in a smaller setting. Think bigger scale, more intricate dependencies, and how your product fits into the grand scheme of the company’s strategy.

• Scale of impact: Decisions and strategies have broader implications, affecting various parts of the organization, its customer base, and potentially its stock price.
• Broader strategic alignment: Greater focus on aligning with long-term corporate strategies, beyond immediate product performance, as well as ensuring it aligns with the portfolio strategy. Does the direction they want to take the product make sense when considered as part of a cohesive portfolio? Will it give the wider business the level of synergy or the mix they are looking for from their business as a whole?
• Increased resource handling: Responsible for managing larger budgets and teams, requiring more sophisticated financial and people management skills.
• Risk management: In an enterprise setting, product decisions often involve higher financial stakes and broader market implications. Effective risk assessment and management become critical, requiring a more cautious approach compared to standard product management, where risks might be more contained.
• Integration with corporate ecosystem: Enterprise product managers must ensure that their product integrates seamlessly with the company’s broader ecosystem, including technology platforms, operational processes, and corporate culture.

Managing multiple products in an enterprise

Switching from managing a single product to juggling a product portfolio in an enterprise environment is like upgrading from a solo backpacking trip to leading a full-blown expedition. 

Handling several products at once? In many ways, it’s the same job, just with a lot more bells and whistles. You’ll still be responsible in your day-to-day for the same sort of things you have to deal with as a single-product PM, but the scope is bigger and there are many more considerations.

But weirdly, it can sometimes be smaller too, as you’ll have more resources to work with and draw on, meaning you can delegate aspects like discovery to people whose job it is to go out and do that for you. Then the challenge is finding the best way for you to get your head around the knowledge that they’ve gathered.

And sometimes, it’s about fine-tuning and optimizing what’s already there, especially in big companies where small changes can have big impacts. Think of companies like Microsoft, where a small but effective feature release that improves their stock price by less than 1% can result in millions of dollars of revenue.

Responsibilities

Stepping up to manage multiple products in a large company? Get ready for a role that’s all about juggling different balls while keeping your eye on the big picture. Here, you’re the mastermind behind a whole suite of products, making sure each one fits perfectly into the company’s overall strategy.

Let’s explore some of the key responsibilities that come with this job, from overseeing a product portfolio to ensuring all your products play nice together:

• Portfolio strategy and analysis: Developing and managing a cohesive strategy for a portfolio of products, ensuring that each product aligns with and contributes to the enterprise’s overall strategy and objectives.
• Resource prioritization: Making critical decisions about resource distribution, and balancing the needs of multiple products to optimize overall portfolio performance.
• Synergy and conflict management: Identifying synergies between products to leverage shared opportunities, and managing potential conflicts or overlaps within the portfolio.
• Market analysis and positioning: Conducting thorough market analysis for each product, positioning them effectively within their respective markets and against competitors.
• Long-term lifecycle planning: Planning and managing the long-term lifecycle of each product in the portfolio, including growth, maturity, and potential phase-out strategies.

Challenges

When you’re at the helm of multiple products in a large enterprise, expect to face a unique set of challenges. Balancing resources, maintaining a unified vision, and managing the intricate relationships between your products are just a few of the tasks on your plate.

So, let’s dive into what makes these challenges different from those in standard product management roles:

• Complex stakeholder management: One of the main challenges is managing a diverse array of stakeholders, including executives, team members, and clients. Effective communication and strategic alignment are crucial in this complex landscape. Keeping everyone informed and on the same page requires a combination of regular updates and the use of collaborative tools like ProdPad to maintain transparency.
• Balancing innovation with stability: Enterprises face the challenge of driving innovation while maintaining the stability of their existing products or services. Fostering a culture that values both innovation and stability helps in this regard. Encouraging controlled, small-scale experiments that can be scaled if successful allows enterprises to innovate without risking core operations.
• Standardizing work processes: Every organization works and grows differently, but often if there are multiple product teams, each will have developed its own way of doing things. A common issue in enterprise product management is finding a way to encourage your teams to standardize how they are working, to increase efficiency and understanding across the line.
• Navigating bureaucracy: Bureaucratic hurdles in large organizations can get in the way of decision-making and innovation. Understanding and navigating this landscape is key. Building relationships with decision-makers and efficiently working within these constraints can help streamline processes for more effective product management. It’s all about securing that elusive executive “buy-in”.
• Diverse product portfolio management: Managing a portfolio of multiple products, each at different life cycle stages and with varying market demands, is a significant challenge. Using portfolio management tools, such as ProdPad’s portfolio roadmap, helps track and adjust the portfolio in line with strategic goals, ensuring balance and focus.
• Adapting to rapid market changes: The fast-paced nature of market changes presents a challenge in managing large-scale products. Adopting agile methodologies and maintaining a flexible approach are essential. Staying informed about market trends and customer feedback allows for quick adaptation of strategies.
• Efficient resource allocation: Allocating limited resources among competing projects and initiatives is a complex task. Understanding strategic priorities and employing a data-driven approach is key to efficient and impactful resource allocation.
• Maintaining quality at scale: As the product portfolio expands, ensuring consistent quality across all offerings truly tests an enterprise Product Manager’s mettle. High standards, robust quality assurance processes, and regular customer feedback are essential in maintaining product excellence.

Differences from standard product management:

When you’re in charge of multiple products in a big enterprise, things get even more interesting. You need to think about balancing multiple product strategies, making big decisions about resources, and how you interact with the higher-ups. 

• Holistic viewpoint: Requires a broader perspective, understanding how individual products fit into and impact the overall portfolio.
• Advanced strategic skills: Involves more sophisticated skills in strategic planning and portfolio management.
• Wider stakeholder network: Entails engaging with a larger and more diverse group of stakeholders, often at higher levels within the organization.
• Strategic resource reallocation: In managing multiple products, enterprise PMs often face the challenge of reallocating resources dynamically across the product portfolio based on shifting priorities and market conditions. This strategic reallocation is a more complex task compared to standard Product Manager roles, where resources are generally focused on a single product.
• Executive-level influence and interaction: Senior enterprise Product Managers typically have more frequent interaction with and direct influence on executive-level decision-making. Their role often requires them to present and justify product strategies to C-suite executives.

In both single-product and multi-product management scenarios within an enterprise, the role of a Product Manager is characterized by a higher degree of strategic involvement, complex stakeholder dynamics, and a focus on aligning with overarching business objectives.

These roles demand a robust understanding of both the big and little pictures of product management, setting them apart from more traditional, smaller-scale product management roles.

Basically, it’s about making the right things happen, at the right time, for the right reasons. And in an enterprise, that’s a tall order.

What makes a great enterprise product manager?

Navigating the waters of enterprise product management requires a special set of sails. Here’s what sets apart a great enterprise product manager:

• Adaptability: The only constant in the enterprise world is change. A great product manager is like a chameleon, adapting quickly to new challenges, shifting priorities, and evolving market conditions.
• Visionary thinking: You need to be the person who can see the forest for the trees. It’s about having a strategic mindset that can connect the dots between today’s actions and tomorrow’s goals.
• Exceptional communication skills: You’re the link between different worlds – developers, marketers, executives, customers. Being able to communicate effectively across these groups is crucial. It’s like being a translator who speaks multiple business languages.
• Strong analytical skills: Data is your compass in the sea of enterprise product management. You need to be able to analyze market trends, user feedback, and performance metrics to make informed decisions.
• Leadership and influence: A great enterprise product manager doesn’t just manage; they lead. It’s about inspiring teams, influencing stakeholders, and driving collective efforts towards a common goal.
• Customer-centric approach: At the end of the day, it’s all about the customer. Understanding their needs, solving their problems, and delivering value is what will make your product stand out.
• Resilience and patience: Dealing with complex systems and navigating bureaucratic waters requires a cool head and a steady hand. Patience isn’t just a virtue; it’s a necessity.
• Expertise in compliance and risk management: Especially in regulated industries, understanding the nuances of compliance, and being adept at risk management can make or break a product.

Being a great enterprise product manager is part art, part science. It’s about blending creativity with analytics, empathy with decisiveness, and vision with execution.

What tools do you need for enterprise product management?

In the toolkit of any effective enterprise Product Manager, you’ll find a mix of strategic frameworks and practical tools. Here’s what you should have at your disposal:

Product portfolio management tools

These tools help you oversee your entire product portfolio, ensuring alignment with business objectives and market needs.

Examples: ProdPad for its product portfolio roadmap features.

Roadmapping software

Essential for visualizing the direction of your products and communicating the roadmap to stakeholders. ProdPad, for example, offers a sleek way to manage your product lines and roadmaps, providing a high-level view that’s easy to share and update.

Examples: ProdPad for its intuitive roadmap visualization.

Analytics and data analysis tools

To keep track of market trends, user behavior, and product performance metrics.

Examples: Google Analytics for web traffic analysis, Mixpanel for user interaction tracking, and Tableau for advanced data visualization.

Collaboration platforms

These are very useful for maintaining smooth collaboration across different teams and departments.

Examples: Whiteboard tools like Miro and Figjam can help easily share ideas in a shared visual space.

Customer feedback tools

To gather and analyze customer insights, helping you stay tuned to their needs and preferences.

Examples: ProdPad for collecting and linking customer feedback to initiatives, SurveyMonkey for conducting surveys, and Dovetail for sorting user research outputs.

Incorporating these tools into your workflow streamlines your processes and helps ensure that you’re making data-driven, customer-focused decisions.

ProdPad, as mentioned above, is a great tool for enterprise product management, covering a number of the bases in one place – it provides your teams with a single source of truth, a standardized way of working, transparent communication both internally and externally, and a seamless way to prioritize and manage your product portfolio.

Don’t just take our word for it though. Get in touch with our team, and let us demonstrate to you exactly how ProdPad can take the weight off your shoulders so you can be the best damn enterprise product manager out there.

What does an enterprise product team look like?

One of the big differences between an enterprise product management organization and, say, a product team in a tech startup is the pretty hefty structure and hierarchy. You’re not just in a product team now, you’re part of an enterprise product management DEPARTMENT. The career path from a Product Manager (PM) to a Chief Product Officer (CPO) is a many-runged ladder, each with increasing responsibility and scope.

Junior and Mid-Level Product Managers

First, you’ll generally find Junior or Mid-Level Product Managers. These folks typically manage specific aspects or features of a product. They are hands-on with day-to-day management tasks like gathering requirements, working with cross-functional teams, and ensuring that their area of the product aligns with the overall product vision and strategy.

Senior Product Managers

As PMs gain experience, they advance to Senior Product Managers. A Senior PM usually takes on the responsibility of managing an entire product. This role involves a deeper strategic involvement, where they oversee the product’s end-to-end lifecycle, make key decisions on product development, and coordinate with various teams to bring the product vision to fruition.

Lead Product Managers or Product Leads

In some organizations, there might be newer roles like Lead Product Managers or Product Leads, especially in companies that follow Agile methodologies. These roles often have similar responsibilities to a Senior PM but with a stronger focus on aligning product development with customer needs and business objectives.

Head of Product or Group Product Manager

A step above is the Head of Product or Group Product Manager. This role involves overseeing a product category or a group of related products. They coordinate with individual product managers, ensuring that each product contributes effectively to the broader product line strategy. They also play a crucial role in aligning product strategies with market trends and business goals.

Product Director

Further up the hierarchy is the Product Director. This role typically involves managing a product line or a significant segment of the product portfolio. A Product Director’s responsibilities include strategic planning for the product line, overseeing product development across multiple products, and ensuring that the product line aligns with the company’s strategic direction.

Vice President (VP) of Product

The VP of Product is a senior executive role, often overseeing multiple product lines or a significant portion of the company’s entire product portfolio. They are responsible for high-level strategic decisions and have a considerable influence on the company’s product direction. The VP of Product works closely with other executives to ensure that the product strategy supports the overall business objectives.

Chief Product Officer (CPO)

At the pinnacle of the product management career path is the Chief Product Officer. The CPO is responsible for the entire product portfolio of the company. This executive role involves setting the overall product strategy, coordinating with other C-level executives, and ensuring that the product portfolio contributes to the company’s long-term success. The CPO plays a critical role in driving innovation, product vision, and business growth.

Collaboration and Reporting Structures

In this hierarchy, Junior and Mid-Level PMs typically report to a Senior PM or a Head of Product. The Head of Product, in turn, reports to the Product Director or VP of Product. Ultimately, these roles align under the direction of the CPO, who ensures that the product strategy is cohesive and aligned with the company’s overarching goals.

Charting your course to product mastery

Enterprise product management is a thrilling ride, filled with challenges and opportunities. It’s about steering your fleet of products toward success, balancing innovation with stability, and aligning a huge and diverse array of stakeholders with your vision. With the right skills, tools, and mindset, you can navigate this stormy ocean and lead your products to safer and more lucrative seas.

Remember, at its heart, enterprise product management is about making impactful decisions that resonate both with your customers and the organization as a whole. And with tools like ProdPad in your arsenal, you’re well-equipped to avoid the sea mines, dodge the reefs, and shake your fist in Davey Jones’ stupid squid face as your product fleet sails merrily off into the sunset.