product

2019
 

Product Management
Product Marketing survey
and

© Product Focus 2019

www.productfocus.com 1 world class product management
Introduction
Product Focus is a global leader in product management and product marketing training for
technology-based products.

Each year we ask product people about their role, issues, salaries and day-to-day activities. This includes
Product Managers, Product Owners and Product Marketing Managers as the roles often overlap.

1174 people took part in this year’s survey – 46 countries and 876 companies are represented.

All the responses for this report were gathered in January 2019.

The survey results represent the industry norm – not best practice. You can find out about best practice
by signing up to our free resources or attending one of our training courses.

www.productfocus.com 1 world class product management

Insights from across the world
Thank you to the 1174 people who took part in this year’s survey. Most were from the UK and Europe
(82%) but we had significant numbers from the US and elsewhere.

20% were Head of, Director or VP.

US Europe
ROW
82%
9%
9%
9%

46 countries and 876 companies are represented

40%

8%
20% 39%

7% 24% 9% 9%
12%
0%
United Germany The Rest of US Rest of
Kingdom Netherlands Europe world

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Salary

£63k
$ € £ (in thousands)
130 114 100

€69k
104 91 80

78 68 60

$117k 52

26
45

23
40

20

0 0 0
UK European US
salaries salaries salaries
The average base salary paid to
Product Managers and Senior
Product Managers (excluding
Juniors and Heads etc).

Full package value

$ € £ (in thousands)

£71k 162 142 125

130 114 100

€75k
97 85 75

65 57 50

$139k
32 28 25

0 0 0
Junior Product Senior Head,
Product Manager Product Director
Manager Manager or VP

The average package value for Product Average package value across all regions
Managers and Senior Product Managers.

64% of all respondents receive a bonus,

20% get some shares, 18% a company car
and half get pension contributions and
health insurance.

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Salaries across the world

£ £ (in thousands)
150

125

100

75
Highest quartile
50 3rd quartile

25 30000 2nd quartile

Lowest quartile
0
Junior Product Senior Head,
Product Manager Product Director
Manager Manager or VP

$ $ (in thousands) € € (in thousands)

150
250
125
200
100
150
75

100 50

25
50
0
0 Junior Product Senior Head,
Junior Product Senior Head, Product Manager Product Director
Product Manager Product Director Manager Manager or VP
Manager Manager or VP

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Number of products

5
25%

20%

15%
Was the average number 10%
of products managed by
respondents (excluding 5%
heads, directors and VPs)
0%
1 2 3 4 5 6 to 10 10+

How many products do you manage?

More than half of Heads, Directors
and VPs manage 5 or fewer products
with only 26% managing more than
10.

Commercial objectives

53%
7%
19% No, fell short or far short of our objectives

21% Yes, we met our objectives

Yes, we exceeded or far exceeded our objectives

It's too early to tell

of respondents had
products that met or
bettered their
commercial objectives
15% 38%
It has no objectives
Did your product meet its
commercial objectives?

Experience counts - 78% of products

managed by PMs with more than 3
years experience were commercially
successful.

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Types of product

54%
Hardware/physical products
10.2%
4.2%
Software Services
5%
of product people are
responsible for a mix of
21.2% 26.8% 18% 14.6%
different types of products

Are your products software,

18% of product people have the hardware/physical products or
challenge of managing propositions services?
made up of software, hardware and
service elements.

Types of customer

68%
Internal customers
11.9%

Business Consumer
4.7% 1.3%

of survey respondents 4.5%

look after products sold to
51.2% 18.5%
businesses 7.9%

Almost 1 in 5 respondents must Are your products sold to

businesses, consumers or
understand diverse markets e.g. internal customers?
internal and external business
clients or consumer and business
clients.

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Current role
25%

3 20%

15%

10%
The average number of
years respondents have 5%
been in their current role
0%
Less than 1 to 2 2 to 3 3 to 5 5 to 8 More than
1 year years years years years 8 years

How long have you been in your current role?

People build a career in product
management. More than 2/3 of
respondents have more than 4 years
total experience and 25% have more
than 10 years in various roles.

Personal performance
70%

69%
60%
50%
40%
30%
The most frequently used 20%
personal performance 10%
measurement is 0%
Management by Objectives Objectives Revenue Profit & loss Not measured Other

How are you measured (tick all that apply)?

Revenue (39%) and profit & loss

(22%) metrics are used for many
respondents. Customer satisfaction
is the most common metric in the
‘other’ category.

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Time

52%
The amount of time
spent on unplanned ‘fire-

Pla
fighting’ activities
Firefi ing

nned activiti
ght 52% 48%

es
ou
rking t what
Wo right product ing
e is er rs
th Planned vs un-planned he

ot v
Co
35% 17%

My
th p i n g t o ll

responsibi
se
ro d u c t

25% 55%
H el pi e pr

G re y
40% 28%
th

ep
ng o

ow

lity
l

er
He

du del
to

n
sh
c t ive r ip

Product activities Activity ownership

lled/
nce
Em Ca n hold
r a o
he

il

14%
Ot

26%
On-
24%
time deliv

48%
10% 38%
L ate d
IM

23% 17%
ery
e li
dis

o er
ns ne
Gr u

ss u p o
v

y
to - o
c

io n
s O n ec- ussi
dis
Work and communications Project delivery
Post-launch

Pre-launch

52% 48%

Stage of lifecycle

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Development approach

92% 25%
8%

40%
Agile

Agile - Waterfall hybrid

Agile on some, Waterfall on others

The number of respondents Waterfall
reporting their company use 27%
a type of Agile development

Only 37% of product managers

in companies using Agile are the
Product Owner.

68% of companies use a mix of

approaches e.g. Scrum + Kanban or
Scrum + Waterfall.

What to build?

47% 6%
7%
13%
23%
Product Manager, there's no PO

Mainly the Product Manager

of respondents say it’s the
Product Manager who
makes the decision on what
to build
Product Manager and Product Owner
working collaboratively
Mainly the Product Owner
24%
27% Product Owner
Other
In Agile, who makes the
decision on what to build?

27% of respondents say its Product

Managers and Product Owners
working together who make the
decision.

In 13% of cases it’s the Product

Owner who makes the decision.

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Process maturity

42%
8%
23% Not defined

Defined but not really used

Defined and generally used

50% 19%
of Product Management Defined and always used
departments have
processes that aren’t really
defined or widely used How good are your product
management processes?

Only 8% of people say that their

processes are always used.

Almost 1 in 4 people are working

without the benefit of defined
processes.

Skills

3x
100%

80%
UX skills

60% Commercial

more Product Managers Marketing

40%
rate themselves very Technical
technically skilled 20%
compared to their ratings
for UX and Marketing 0%
Very skilled Somewhat skilled Not skilled

Only 10% of people consider

themselves very skilled at UX and
13% consider themselves very
skilled at Marketing.

www.productfocus.com 10 world class product management

Your big issues
We’ve analyzed hundreds of written comments to identify the most common issues raised by
respondents.

In order of priority these are

1. Product management responsibilities are not clearly defined and overlap with other roles

2. Lack of time or resources – product managers are overloaded or spread too thinly

3. Product management lacks power or influence – its value is not appreciated

4. Standard tools and processes are missing

5. Lack of strategic direction from senior management or constantly changing priorities

6. Product management is done in an ad-hoc and inconsistent way

7. Too much focus on fire-fighting or customer work at the expense of strategic activities

The number 1 issue raised by respondents was that product management responsibilities are not
clearly defined and overlap with other roles.

Our Product Activities Framework can help with this. It identifies all the product related activities that
need to take place in any company with products. Companies use it to describe which product roles
own each activity, understand any gaps and determine any overlaps.

Strategic Product Activities

-working out what the right product is for the business

Insight Analysis Direction

Market research Segmentation Product & portfolio strategy

Customer research Propositions Vision & evangelizing

Competitive research Positioning Roadmaps

Product performance Business cases Pricing

Inbound Activities Outbound Activities

-helping the business to deliver the product -helping the business to sell the product

Discovery & design Launch

Requirements Product promotion

Project & partner management Sales & marketing content

Operational readiness & trials Sales support

Product Activities Framework

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Your big issues
“Moving the company “Everyone thinks they “We often write business
from a start-up mentality can do this job but their cases after we have
to a fast-growing scalable questions and decisions started development (so
one” show they can’t” backwards!) in order to
validate we made the
right choice”

“No authority to direct
activities – lots of time
spent coercing required
behaviour from other
parts of the company”
“Sales are too dominant. “Top level direction and
Quick wins are concrete, vision is lacking”
strategy can be debated”

“It’s a leadership role in

“We’re just spread too
thinly and often have to
play the role of ‘adult in
the room’”
“Too many stakeholders to some divisions but in
please” others it’s still overruled
by software architects who
want to punt their next
shiny idea to market”

“A lot of PM blogs are focused on start-ups where everyone is pulling together and innovation is valued.
Would love to see more dealing with large companies that have been operating for years, with mountains of
technical debt, horrendous politics, lip service paid to innovation, reorgs every year and investment horizons
of 12 months. Of course that’s not where I work :)”

“We’re overstretched. The business sees us as subject matter experts and we are dragged
into training and sales calls seemingly on a whim. Our experience and knowledge is
valued appropriately but our role/function in the business is not”

www.productfocus.com 12 world class product management

Reporting

38% 12%
17%

38%
Product management
(reporting to board level)
Development

Commercial, sales
of Product Management Marketing
departments report directly 13%
Others
to the board 20%

Reporting line

We believe the high proportion

of Product Management teams
reporting directly to the board
reflects the value of an independent,
unbiased function.

A leadership role?

69%
100%

80%

60%
of respondents believe that No
product management is Yes
40%
a leadership role in their
company
20%

0%
Junior Product Senior Head,
Product Manager Product Director
Only 51% of Junior Product Manager Manager or VP
Managers consider that product
management is a leadership role in
their company, compared to 81%1%
of Heads, Directors and VPs.

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HiPPOs, ZEBRAs & RHiNOs
One of the quotes we received was ‘We’ve no real strategy. Everything
is driven by HiPPOs, ZEBRAs and RHiNOs’.

Just in case you haven’t come across these animals…

The HiPPO is the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. If we’re in a meeting

and everyone has an opinion then it’s the HiPPOs opinion that’s
going to win. If a decision has to be made the boss wins – after all
there must be some reason they get paid more.

As product people we often find ourselves in meetings with HiPPOs.

They can be loud, aggressive and dangerous when angry. However,
if we’ve got facts and data to back up our opinion it really helps us to
deal with the HiPPOs.

We also sometimes come across ZEBRAs. Zero Evidence But Really

Arrogant. The ZEBRA is often someone with “expertise” but doesn’t
have any facts to back them up. You can see our blog on these animals
here.

Finally there are RHiNOs. A RHiNO is a Really High value New

Opportunity. It’s when a sales person comes along with a big deal - but
for something that you don’t currently do. There is a danger that all
your carefully researched roadmap plans will be trampled underfoot,
as resources are quickly re-allocated to build whatever it is the RHiNO
requires. You can see our blog on how to deal with RHiNOs here.

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Stop fire-fighting
... and deliver world class product management

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