What is a Product?
A product is a collection of features and functions that deliver a solution to a problem. As an example, a website for a media organization can be managed as a product. As a digital product, it contains various features such as comments, user login, media players and interactive stories that can contain their own subset of embedded features.
A key consideration before implementing the product lifecycle process is to agree on a shared understanding of what the word “product” means. In a media company, both ‘content’ and technology ‘platforms’ are considered to be products. Sales, marketing and content teams may take a more active role in owning the content that is packaged and distributed as a product, however the digital team in a media organization typically owns the technology product. Strong products arise when there is synergy between content and technology.
In scenarios where the commercial team doesn’t own the product, the Product Manager treats sales teams as key stakeholders who have input into defining success metrics and requirements for a product. A product is then actively “managed” towards achieving agreed upon business objectives. These can be commercial on non-commercial objectives. In some organizations, there may be hard revenue metrics that drive new product feature prioritization based on their ability to help the business achieve certain revenue targets. In other organizations, growth alone can drive product strategy, in which case features are prioritized in order to achieve certain audience reach goals.
The platform is often capable of driving content and sales strategy, and vice versa. Understanding this key distinction and appreciation for the content side of a ‘product’ is an important part of ensuring that the products that are developed have a solid backing across the commercial and operational parts of the media organization.
From a content perspective, a product can be a news story, told through a variety of formats such as video, text and increasingly audio. From a commercial perspective, a product can be an ad unit or subscription package, also made available in a variety of formats. From a technology perspective, the product is the platform and vehicle through which content is packaged and distributed to audiences. In this guide, we focus on the product lifecycle for technology products, where commercial and content teams have direct inputs as stakeholders throughout the various phases of the product lifecycle.