Strategies for Dealing With Software Product Management Challenges

Software product management, which involves multiple processes and responsibilities and links to many activities within the organisation, increases the success rate of IT projects. However, the adoption of product management activities and the implementation of the software product manager role itself varies between companies. This research explores the topic of software product managers' strategies for dealing with challenges in their work. The aim of the study is to identify and evaluate solutions to the main problems that affect the software product management process and to provide guidelines for dealing with them. For this purpose, a focus group method was adopted and 47 software product managers participated in 15 focus groups. This was followed by a survey to assess the comprehensibility and effectiveness of the solutions identified. The paper proposes a list of 39 solutions to the 5 most common problems in the work of product managers. Furthermore, based on the identified solutions and the results of discussions with experienced professionals during the focus groups, guidelines for these problems were also developed. These guidelines can be used by product managers as well as other roles working in the product development team to create their own strategies for overcoming software product management challenges and improving software engineering practices. Finally, the solutions and guidelines presented, when combined with a list of problems identified in previous research, will form a Software Product Management Guide- a framework currently under construction, as part of wider research, for product development teams to improve software engineering practices.