The 2022.4 product update is here: From uncertainty to opportunity

The theme of the 2022 Product Excellence summit was Embracing Uncertainty – and while it might feel particularly salient at the moment, it’s something product professionals are deeply familiar with. 

With the rise in digitization and customer expectations, digital products and experiences have become revenue and growth drivers, putting more pressure than ever on product managers to lead their teams to success. 

Consequently, a recent study by Bain & Company found that companies that excel in product management perform better in the market and are over 40% more likely to effectively balance growth and profitability. However, only 25% of chief technology officers feel the return on their company’s software development investments meets their expectations. 

This comes at a time when to stay competitive and viable, there’s less room for error in product development and it is more essential than ever to accelerate product innovation. Productboard’s new capabilities will help product management organizations navigate today’s uncertainties, be more strategic with their product investments, and execute efficiently.

“While product teams have always worked under complexity and ambiguity, today’s market conditions and rapidly changing customer behaviors have made it increasingly challenging to understand what the market wants and make the right product decisions,” said Srinivas Krishnamurti, SVP of Product, Productboard. “As product teams are facing increased pressure to move faster and have less room for mistakes, we want to provide them with the tools to build long-term differentiation and value for their customers and make their teams more resilient.”

Productboard’s own 2022 Product Excellence Survey of over 1,400 product professionals (find the full 2022 Product Excellence report here) found the top 2 trends observed across the past 18 months were an increased focus on: 

1. Building the right products and features (54% reported this)
2. Driving efficiencies across the product organization (47% reported this) 

So while uncertainty can never be completely eliminated, we believe our new capabilities will help product management organizations navigate today’s uncertainties, internally and externally. Externally through customer-centricity, and better understanding the fast-changing needs of the market as well as internally through new efficiencies, visibility, and alignment to help you collaborate and execute effectively.

Address market needs faster through customer-centricity

According to our 2022 Product Excellence survey, only 14% of product managers surveyed say they effectively categorize feedback to inform prioritization. And less than half feel the products and features on their roadmap reflects the needs of users.

We want to make it easier to listen to the market, identify new opportunities, validate the value of the deliveries made to your customers, and improve customer-centricity throughout the product development lifecycle overall. 

How? We’re so glad you asked! 

• The challenge: Scaling continuous discovery and learning at scale when resources are limited.
  The solution: Discover new opportunities and increase the whole organization’s customer understanding with a live digest that intelligently distills relevant insights and surfaces emerging trends from all incoming customer feedback.
• The challenge: Quickly validating customer value in a scalable way.
  The solution: Assess whether what’s shipped delivers customer value and iterate faster by automating feedback collection using customized surveys targeting precise users at key stages across the product lifecycle.
• The challenge: Closing customer feedback loops by knowing each customer’s needs.
  The solution: Show customers that you’re listening to and acting on their product feedback by having a single consolidated view of each customer’s feedback, unmet needs, feature requests, and your team’s progress toward addressing those needs. 

“The view that Productboard provides has opened up communication channels across the organization and has helped establish trust,” said Josh Gibbs, Vice President of Product at Canto. “Everyone now has more visibility across the product lifecycle, making it easier for us to see gaps and roadblocks and sense risks earlier on, because we can quickly grasp the status of our initiatives and how much work there is to do across the portfolio. Now, we’re more effective at reallocating resources, sliding in new hires, and understanding where to focus our efforts to drive the business forward.”

Deliver outcomes faster by increasing operational efficiency 

We also want to help teams decrease the complexities and uncertainties of bringing new products and features to market, so we’re releasing new capabilities to help teams effectively collaborate on product strategies in a way that scales.  

• The challenge: Keeping everyone across the organization aligned and executing on the strategy.
  The solution: Ensure the product strategy is effectively executed by aligning all work to strategic objectives using OKRs. Track each team’s progress towards achieving business outcomes and identify at-risk initiatives to get them back on track.
• The challenge: Measure your investments and drive continuous improvement without visibility across the product org. 
  The solution: Ensure resources are allocated effectively, get ahead of risks and blockers, and help teams deliver efficiently by having a view into product investments across the entire lifecycle and product portfolio.
• The challenge: Effectively collaborating at scale when relevant information is fragmented. 
  The solution: Have a shared workspace that represents a single source of truth for all product data and a personalizable interface that lets every teammate rapidly access their most important information. Easily launch workflows that connect Productboard to other applications, like design and brainstorming tools.

Whether you were able to join us in person in San Francisco, virtually from anywhere else in the world or have just stopped by today to see what’s in store for the future, thank you for your time. Let’s talk about how Productboard can help you save more of it for yourself and your team.

Get started with a free 15-day trial of Productboard

Watch the product keynote and all of this year’s Product Excellence Summit video recordings. 🎥