IDC PlanScape: IT Product Management

Technology departments are in the business of delivering a range of technology services — communications, transaction processing, analytics, data, and so forth. By treating the major technology services as products — each with a set of desired outcomes, knowledge of customer needs, and life-cycle management — technology leadership is more likely to be responsive to the changing conditions and proactive in its planning and delivery of the technology services it provides.Leveraging the existing best practices for product management — product goals and objectives, life-cycle management from introduction through retirement, product road maps, and processes for changes to the road map — technology leaders can shift from a reactive, project-to-project environment to a more intentional and, by gathering inputs from a wide range of stakeholders, more comprehensive approach to technology service management.If IT product management is new to the organization, there is benefit in, as a starting point, implementing product management with a subset of the technology services, revising the approach based on what is learned, and then expanding to cover all of the major technology services (infrastructure, application, analytics, AI, etc.).