Technology providers must embrace digital product management to survive: Gartner

Technology and service providers (TSPs) that fail to embrace digital product management will be at strong risk of disruption within the next two years, according to Gartner.

“Regardless of whether you are a software, hardware, solution or service provider, digital product management is an inescapable new competency,” said Lars Van Dam, distinguished research vice president at Gartner. “Organizations that embrace and invest in digital product management will be better equipped to capitalize on market shifts and disruptions.”

Digital product management is an emerging discipline that extends the scope of the traditional product manager’s role. It embraces design principles and quantitative insights to inform product vision, direction, trade-off decisions and differentiating customer experiences.

Today, two out of three product management initiatives are disconnected from business strategy. Recent Gartner research reveals that only 16 percent of product managers use their defined product strategy to inform key decisions. Most organizations overinvest in product management execution at the expense of strategy, design and quantitative analysis.

“The majority of CEOs expect to change business models in the next two years, and by 2024, 80 percent of IT organizations will undergo radical restructuring to their missions as they embrace product-centric operating models,” said Mr. Van Dam. “This will require product managers to fundamentally rethink how value is perceived, created and consumed.”

By 2023, 35 percent of product management teams will acknowledge having implemented digital product management and the five critical digital capabilities, from less than 2 percent in 2019.

“Innovation is no longer about product development creating the product that the rest of the organization supports in the market,” said Mr. Van Dam. “Instead, many departments and factors contribute to the creation and delivery of the product every day.”