When you begin building your startup, many questions arise. One such classic question is: Do you outsource product development, or do you hire people to build an in-house team?
Outsourcing is defined as hiring outside service providers to do a necessary part of operating a business that is not one of its core functions.
So, the first question that arises is, “Is product development a core function of my startup or something that I can outsource?”
This might seem counter-intuitive, but product development may not be a core function for your business. However, if it is, it can depend on the stage your company is in. For instance: after you have built a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) with an outsourced product development team, and you made sure your early adopters are “hooked” on it, for example, you might want to shift your focus from product building to marketing and growing your user base.
When it comes to product development, there is no right or wrong answer. It will depend on your specific circumstances and context. What is your startup’s burn rate, how long is your financial runway, how critical is product development for the stage you are in, what growth goals you have set with your investors, etc.
If you’d like, you can easily outsource product development. What we believe you can’t outsource is product management.
Product management is a core function of any startup — even when done by a founder who doesn’t realize what they’re doing.
A product manager guides every step of a product’s development: from idea to user flows, pricing, and positioning, etc. They own the strategy behind a product, develop the functional concept and manage the launch of new features. They usually team up with a tech lead to coordinate work done by developers and designers and are both responsible for the overall success of a product.
At Runtime Revolution, we specialised in working with the client’s in-house product managers or founders in the role of a product manager — we don’t see it working effectively in any other way.
Our development and design teams work in tandem and with the product management team on the client’s end as if they were all one team. We have a critical view of the product management process, but it’s up to the product manager to guide the product roadmap.
That guidance can be seen in the following aspects of a product’s management:
- Concept and vision: the “job” the product does for the user, what value it adds to the end user’s life, what impact it should have.
- Features and user flows: prioritising which features are developed, when they are released, how they are released, and how they are launched. Additionally, they enhance how the user experiences the web or mobile app through user flows — the complete paths a user takes to complete an action.
- Competitive analysis: even when you are developing something totally new, the chances that someone else is trying to fix the same problem are very high. It doesn’t have to be a company that is developing something similar to yours. It can just be a company that is trying to fix the same problem by using a different approach. It’s a product manager’s job to make sure that the company produces a product that is competitive and stays competitive. This is achieved by canvassing the market for competing companies and figuring out how they stack up against their own.
- Product benchmarking: this may seem the same as competitive analysis. The difference is subtle. While competitive analysis focuses on the organisation, product benchmarking focuses on the product. Here, a product manager compares their product against their competitor’s.
- Product roadmap: to develop a product’s roadmap — a high-level textual and visual summary that maps the vision, direction, and evolution of your product over time. It’s a guiding strategic document and a plan for executing a product’s strategy.
This is not an exhaustive list, and much of the work a product manager does will vary depending on the person that does this role.
The way we align our work with the customer’s product manager is by working along with our technical team leaders and designers:
- The UX/UI designer’s work is guided by the product manager, and together they produce conceptual wireframes and then mockups with the different user flows on the product.
- Picking up where the designer and product manager left off, and working together with our technical team leader and applying the Agile methodology, they both produce a structured plan to implement the concept by translating it into user stories. In Agile, user stories are a natural language, informal description of a feature. They are written from the perspective of the end user and make communication easier and understanding more precise between team members. These user stories are then prioritised according to the effort needed for completing them and the product’s roadmap.
As you can see, an in-house product manager is essential for a startup’s success. If you think you need more help figuring out how to move forward regarding your product development and management, feel free to get in touch with us! At Runtime Revolution, we are experts in setting up product development teams to work with you in building your product and make your vision a reality!