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Product managers are responsible for making a lot of decisions about our products while they are being developed; however, one of the most important decisions has to be if we are going to team with another company to develop a product. It’s the classic “Batman” (he’s got a sidekick names Robin) vs “The Lone Ranger” type of decision. Which way should you go?
Products That Are Simple
Look, not every product out there requires rocket scientists to create (can anyone say “pet rock”?). A couple of researchers, Esteve Almirall and Ramon Casadesus-Maxanell have spent some time looking into this issue.
What they have found may surprise you. It turns out that if you decide to partner with another firm, it’s going to create a whole bunch of hassles for you as a product manager. This can be just a cost of doing business; however, if the product that you are developing is simple, then partnering is a waste of your time.
The simpler the product, the less need there is to partner with another firm. Doing so will only slow down the development process as the teams try to coordinate when such collaboration really could all be done internally. Additionally, when it comes time to market the product, the firms involved may have differing opinions on how to go about doing this.
Products That Are Complicated
All the way on the other side of the product development spectrum are complex products. These are the ground-breaking products that potentially your customers have never seen before. Think of things like the original Palm Pilot or the Apple iPad.
These products are also poor candidates to be created by companies that team up. The reasons are fairly simple: ultimately during the development process the product teams are going to be looking for ways to innovate. This process is very hard to do internally and almost impossible to do if you have to coordinate your actions with an external company.
Especially if your product has no competition because it is so very new, then you know how hard it is for a product manager to keep your own management supporting the project. Just imagine how hard it would be to keep the management at multiple companies onboard!
Products That Are Just Right For Collaboration
Sorry for being so negative about this idea of companies collaborating in order to develop a new product. However, it’s not all gloom and doom. It turns out that there is one class of products that actually can benefit from having a product manager bring in an outside company as a development partner: medium-low complexity products.
Why does external collaboration work here? Good question. It turns out that when the design of a product is not all that hard, but when there are decisions that can go either way, having another partner company take a look at what your company is doing can really help.
Their insights can help prevent your company from making those product decisions that always seem so foolish in hindsight. The benefit of this insight turns out to far outweigh the effort that you’ll have to go through to coordinate development activities and marketing programs.
What All Of This Means For You
In our childhood we all liked both Batman and the Lone Ranger. However, when it comes to the job of a product manager we end up having to choose who we like better. The choice is not always easy to make.
If the product that we are developing is either fairly simple or wickedly complex, then partnering with another firm is a poor idea. It will just slow things down and won’t provide a lot of extra value. However, if we are working on a medium-low complexity product then partnering can have valuable benefits by providing additional sets of inputs and observations.
Product managers are generally not afraid to go it alone. However, there are times that we really do need another company to act as our sidekick when we are developing a new product. It’s the ability to make the right decision to partner or not that will turn you into a product management superhero within your company…
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Source by Dr. Jim Anderson
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