Three Perilous Paths of Product Management

I've fallen victim to chasing the wrong product strategy. Here are three common product pitfalls in the hope that I can prevent others from making the same mistake.

In 12 years in software Product Management, I've witnessed and participated in three different types of product strategies that sound amazing, but have a very low likelihood of success. In fact, I've seen very few cases where the strategies below have worked for software teams. Let's call them the three perils.

🛟 Peril 1: Creating a category. The upside is huge. Imagine if we're first to market? We could own this thing! Well, sure. But likely there is no market for a reason. It may all work out but you have to be willing to invest several years into educating, activating the market. And then, you're doing the difficult category creation work for future market entrants. Creator beware. My analogy: This is like opting in to climb a mountain before climbing the mountain you really want to climb. You're selecting the harder path. Might be good if you have a long time horizon to success. Most don't.

🛟 Peril 2: Replatforming. I've fallen for this one several times. Heck, I've joined companies to participate in this type of strategy. It rarely works. Why? Most teams build a new stack from the ground up but rarely invest in the necessary migration tools or experience. Then, assuming the new platform is superior to the old one (a farfetched bet), the customer is left owning much of the work to migrate. It'll beg the question for the client: Should we consider other vendors given the effort? A better way is to swap out just part of the platform that's causing issues (for example, a new UI for usability problems or a new service layer for performance issues). My analogy: Imagine you own an island in the sea where your customers live. The island is good enough but surrounded by risk (sharks). You invest in a much nicer island that your customers can see but not easily reach. They'd like to come over to the new location, but aren't sure if they have the ability to. Wouldn't it be better to throw the client a raft? Better yet, build on the island they're already on?

🛟 Peril 3: Chasing a new market or market segment. Sure, at some point, you might be left with no other option to grow through catering to a new audience. However, a lot of teams make this move too early, building a new product for a new audience rather than continuing to support the audience that already trusts your brand. My analogy: This is like hitting a fork in the road and opting to head down the path with less travelers, hoping to reach a larger population in the future. Find your tribe and travel with them.

What did I miss? What might you disagree with? Have any war stories of your own in these areas?