Weekly Reflection: The Art of Product Management Beyond Feature Changes
These past few months have taught me a profound lesson about product management that I never fully appreciated in my digital product days: the problem is rarely your product itself.
Managing a seemingly unchangeable product has proven to be the greatest challenge I've faced as a product manager. In the digital world, we're blessed (or perhaps cursed) with the luxury of modifying our products every few weeks based on feedback. We hear from a vocal minority and mistake their opinions for universal truth, then rush back to engineering requesting changes.
But this constant cycle of modification isn't what product management should be about.
My experience with physical products has forced me to understand user feedback at a much deeper level than the surface "I'd rather have X" comments. The marginal benefit gained from incremental changes driven by a subset of users doesn't just confuse your team with constantly shifting directions—it confuses your users who must continually adapt to new layouts and features, potentially driving churn rather than loyalty.
What separates great PMs from excellent ones is the ability to adapt the same product for multiple different user groups and their diverse needs. This isn't about misrepresentation—it's about understanding your product so thoroughly that you can craft the narrative and highlight specific use cases without reinventing the wheel each time.
As a PM, your north star should be directing your team to build a product with enough flexibility that you can position it for various segments—not just one narrow cohort. And often, you inherit a product that simply cannot be changed drastically due to technical, financial, or market constraints.
This is when the real work begins: crafting that compelling story that connects your unchangeable product with the evolving needs of your users.
Have you faced similar challenges in product management? How do you balance stability with the pressure to constantly iterate?
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