What Is Product Management Workflow?

Stages of product management workflow

These are the standard stages of the product management workflow you need to know.

Idea management

The first step of the product management workflow is ideation, originating from brainstorming sessions, customer interaction, or market analysis. However, not all ideas are worth pursuing. The product manager's job is to select the most useful and customer-centric ideas and queue them to make a new or better product.

Specifications

After deciding on an idea, the next step is to define its details. Product specifications should answer the following questions:

• What are we building?
• What is the end goal of the product or feature?
• What are the metrics of success for this product or feature?

Depending on the company and product, specifications can be well-defined or drafted simply. Product specifications are essential for understanding the scale and timelines for delivering a product. 

Roadmapping

Some companies prefer to put the prioritization stage before roadmapping in their product management workflow. However, before getting into the technical aspects of product features, it's wise to map out and align the company's objectives and the product's strategic goals. 

The roadmapping stage helps identify which features have the most significant potential impact and highest ROI without getting caught up in the minute technicalities.

Prioritization

Here, you prioritize backlog tasks. Choose a prioritization framework based on the product's key metrics, strategy, and goals. Prioritization transforms the ideation phase into an action-oriented one. 

Product managers have to prioritize the most urgent and useful tasks in the backlog, ensuring that all teams are working in alignment to achieve them. Popular prioritization frameworks include RICE, MoSCoW, and the Kano model.

Delivery

Once the product journey has reached this stage, it is time for the product management team to take a backseat and give way to the development team. 

Product delivery varies based on the company and its project management approach. For organizations using a Waterfall model, product releases are few. They take a long time to develop and ship only when the functionality is complete. 

In an Agile workspace, the company keeps making small improvements and shipping to the client, breaking the product development process into smaller chunks.

Analytics

The product journey doesn't end after delivery. Once the product is approved and successfully delivered, it's time to analyze the data it returns. 

Every product provides a test case the product team can mine for valuable information for future products or features. This helps the product team discover which behaviors drive vital metrics. Product analytics enables ongoing optimization of the user experience. It allows the team to build roadmaps that improve the product and increase revenue.

An ideal product management workflow follows the steps provided here. However, every company should prioritize the most practical steps in their own product journey.