Cloud Product Management

CloudProduct Management: 85% of organisations are re-accelerating digital initiatives by shifting towards product-centricity.​ (Gartner).​​

A product-centric approach industrialises the “design-build-consume” model by providing ready to consume cloud products that have required integrations, standards, and security “baked in” via automated patterns and processes. 

Too often organisations see cloud “product management” as an extended function of the cloud engineering team rather than a separate capability that has a unique set of skills. The product management function is the owner of the cloud product roadmap (balancing user & organisational priorities) and co-ordinating cloud product and service development, launch and continuous improvement.

A critical part of the product management function in this model is designing “whole product solutions” that reflect both the user desired functionality and consumer experience, as well inclusion of organisational standards, controls and guardrails required by central teams.

This “whole product solution” approach illustrates the common challenge when cloud and platform engineering teams are trying to perform the product management function. These teams by nature take an engineering centric approach and focus on the “core product” components without considering the “expected” and “augmented” product components that deliver the functionality and consumption experience desired by the end user.

 A key principle of the product centric approach is that cloud products are available for immediate consumption, and that this cloud product consumption model see’s internal users increasingly interfacing with platforms via self-service offerings rather than central team sand manual processes.

It is important to note that moving to a cloud product-centric approach takes time, but it is central to creating the cultural shift that enables the adoption and scale of cloud-centric ways of working and creating a culture of continuous improvement and an evergreen technology estate.