A product manager’s work is ultimately judged by the product’s success. Failure is often signaled by:
- A Bug-Ridden Launch: The product is released to the market with an excessive number of errors, damaging its reputation from the start.
- Loss of Strategic Vision: Scope creep and constant changes, especially late in development, cause the product to drift from its initial objective until it becomes unclear or irrelevant.
- Severe Budget Overruns: Development costs spiral out of control, far exceeding the initial budget for both manpower and technical resources.
- Poor Market Reception: The product fails to gain traction, resulting in low user adoption and engagement.
- Ignored or Ineffective Metrics: Key performance indicators (KPIs) are not defined, tracked, or acted upon. This includes failing to monitor core health metrics like Daily Active Users (DAU), churn rate, conversion rate, and customer lifetime value (LTV), leaving the team without data-driven guidance.
- No Clear Growth Strategy: The product lacks a plan to attract, retain, and expand its user base, leading to immediate stagnation.
- Unclear Monetization: There is no viable plan to generate revenue. While valuation is important, sustainable cash flow is essential for funding ongoing operations and growth.
In essence, no matter how organized you are or how flawless your process, if the product fails in the market, you, as the product manager, have failed.
Consider this example: You create excellent documentation (MRD, BRD, PRD), run agile ceremonies flawlessly, maintain a pristine backlog, and execute a smooth deployment with no major bugs. Yet, the product has few to no users. This is still a failure. It indicates a fundamental disconnect: you built something users didn’t truly need or want, even if initial MVP data seemed promising.
Therefore, a product manager’s role extends far beyond mastering Scrum and leading a development team. They must also embody the instincts of a growth owner and a sales strategist.
