Understanding the End-to-End Product Management Process

The end-to-end product management process is the series of steps taken in the production of a product, from when the idea was formed to after the product is launched. 

What is end-to-end product management?

The first step in creating a product is to idealize the product and look once it’s ready. The end-to-end product lifecycle management goes from product idealization to product realization and delivery to consumers.

The end-to-end product management process focuses on creating a product vision, developing a product and bringing new products to users, and following up on how they interact with it throughout the entire product lifecycle.

So a single iteration of the process starts with idea generation and research, it follows the development process of the product, and ends with the interaction with users. So we improve the actual product based on real user feedback.

The product manager or the product owner leads the product team and the end-to-end management process to create a successful product strategy. The overall success of the end-to-end product management process and the product itself rest on the product manager.

How does StoriesOnBoard support the end-to-end product management process?

StoriesOnBoard is an end-to-end product management tool, built around user story mapping. Story mapping supports the product discovery phase of the product planning process.

StoriesOnBoard’s Feedback Management allows you to automate feedback collection from users and customers into a single repository. This way, you’ll have a pool of ideas already ready to go once you enter the ideation phase.

Then, you can collaborate around feature ideas and build them up so that the development team can take action on them. A product roadmap supports prioritization and validation where you can share feature ideas with your audience. Later, you can map all that out in a story map and plan releases.

StoriesOnBoard also helps you to close the feedback loop, because the contact info of stakeholders from who the insights came is always linked to the higher-level ideas.

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Main stages of the end-to-end product management process

Great ideas don’t often mean a great final product. Also, there are many ideas, and not all are great. Product management helps to make the most of great ideas to produce great products for customers and meet the business goals through the following stages:

1. Idea generation 

Idea generation is the starting point of the product. At this point, the idea is first formed in the person’s head without an idea if it’ll turn out well or not.

2. Idea management 

This is where the idea is produced, with feature requests and new suggestions making up the product backlog. During this process, the product evolves, and the best ideas are locked down, so they will be developed further. 

3. Clarify specifications 

The ideas, suggestions, and feature requests from the last stage are fleshed out during this stage, and more details are added. Again, this will help to define the effort needed and the impact that each one is expected to have. 

4. Roadmapping 

Roadmapping takes into account the strategy and the product vision. A product roadmap helps communicate where you are in the product design, your destination, and how you will get to the destination.

This phase focuses more on the backlog and the roadmap. It looks into the details of these and seeks to create priorities based on several inputs. During this process, the product manager decides what product features to build at a specific time, depending on what’s more valuable for the user and product, and creates the first limited, but a working prototype of the product, the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). A frequently used model for prioritization is the MoSCoW model, and there are many other prioritization techniques. 

6. Delivery 

This stage is the product development process. It sees the product manager working closely with external and internal stakeholders, other teams, and other managers e.g. project managers and the product development team. Product marketing, engineering, DevOps, sales teams, and support teams ensure that the product’s features have high-quality delivery and meet the product specification.

7. Analytics and experiments 

This is the final stage of the process after the product launch. If you take an iterative approach, it can also be the start of a new cycle. The product team runs experiments and tracks analytics to test and improve the product and understand its actual value before launching it. They carry out surveys, trials, and follow-up analyses. Typically, they look at the target markets,  the product-market fit, competitors, customer experience, or user experience.

8. Customer feedback

Customer feedback is important at all stages of the product life cycle management because it helps the team with validating and improve the proposed products and features of the product. In addition, it gives suggestions and insights from target customers that help to understand the effectiveness of the product in fulfilling the potential customers’ needs. Customer feedback also helps the product manager discover problems with the product that they did not know of.

Conclusion

The end to end product lifecycle management process is essential in creating a product that meets market needs and satisfies customers.

About the author

Charlie Svensson is a fast, engaging and experienced dissertation writer. He’s skilled in content writing. The favorite topics of his posts are education, social media, marketing, SEO, motivation blogging, and self-growth. Excellent adaptability of skills to reach diverse audiences.