What Is a Digital Product?

The first step to defining the role of a product manager is to understand what is meant by a digital product. With technology’s influence, there are many digital products that a news organization might be developing and maintaining at any time. In the 2016 research paper, “Managing Digital Products in a Newsroom Context,”^[1] one interview respondent succinctly articulated this newfound complexity.

“We used to know what a media product was. It was a newspaper or a television broadcast. Now it’s much broader.”^[2]

Stories themselves can be digital products when they have interactive or data components. For example, organizations like ProPublica and Texas Tribune have made it their mission to present and visualize data in the service of their stories. ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs^[3] project provides an interface to explore financial contributions physicians receive from pharmaceutical companies. Texas Tribune has developed projects that allow users to explore state employee salaries,^[4] public schools ^[5] and Texas prison inmates. ProPublica and Texas Tribune collaborated on the award-winning Hell and High Water^[6] project, which used mapping and data to visualize the problem of hurricane preparedness, months before Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston.

But interactive journalism projects aren’t the only digital products a news organization might develop. Some examples of digital products include:

• Mobile applications, like The New York Times Cooking app^[7]
• Bots, like the Quartz app^[8]  that facilitates a conversation with the news
• Special project and event sites, like the Hook ‘Em website^[9]  developed by Austin American Statesman to highlight sports news about The University of Texas
• Social media engagement products that solicit user input, like ProPublica’s project to monitor online political ads^[10]

And there are internal projects like content management systems, subscription services, and analytics products that help an organization more efficiently manage their operations. These are just a few examples of the range of digital activities managed by news organizations, with new applications being introduced all the time.

Digital products require a different set of skills than those of a traditional reporter or editor. The complexity and breadth of digital products have elevated the need for managers with unique skills and perspectives. That role falls to someone with a product manager capacity, whether the job title specifically states that or not.

Since 2016, articles have been written and summits convened on defining this new role of product management role as it relates to journalism  ^{[11][12][13][14]} The role of “journalist” used to be synonymous with “reporter” and “editor.” But now, a new realm of functions and responsibilities has emerged in the service of digital platforms, products, data, and engagement. These are roles as programmers and designers, social media experts, community managers and data analysts, and those who manage and coordinate these resources. In addition to managing the technical aspects of a product, a product manager must also be concerned with their product’s exact role in the strategy of an organization and its life cycle across social media and other platforms, using data to inform decision-making.

Even those in more traditional roles in media organizations need to have a stronger understanding of the product management life cycle. In “The Rise of the Journalist Product Manager”^[15] Fontoura said:

“A reporter that publishes a feature nowadays needs to understand how that story gets measured, how it’s affected when it goes through a push notification, or when new customization options appear on the CMS. In other words, how does technology and its use affect that story?”^[16]

Thus, a product management mindset for the entire organization is increasingly important. The role of product manager broadly influences an organization’s commitment to innovation and digital culture, making it a valuable and critical function and an emerging career path.

History and Background of Product Management

The concept of product management started in the 1930s in the field of consumer goods marketing, where companies like Procter & Gamble made brands the center of the organization and developed customer-centric strategies.^[17] But product development was not often included in this process, as consumer products were the result of the manufacturing function. The focus of product management through most of the twentieth century was on sales, promotion and distribution, using marketing to create demand for the products  – toilet paper, laundry detergent, beauty aids – these companies manufactured.

But product development eventually became central to the technology industry, causing the development role to more closely align with customer needs. Product management connects an organization’s products to its mission and values. It has been a function of marketing and engineering departments, but recently has become more central in organizations, with product officers reporting to the top executive in many companies. New roles have emerged with titles like chief product officer, director of product development, and product editor. Other roles, like community manager and social media editor, have product management concepts at their core. Where the product function specifically lies in an organization depends on the type of organization and its product goals.

Product Management in Tech

Product management is an emerging role, defined by continuous innovation, particularly as it is used in journalism. However, this is a fairly mature role in the technology industry. There are courses, websites, books, and articles that describe the product management process.

Courses

• Product Management – General Assembly^[18]
• Become a Product Manager: Learn the Skills & Get the Job – Udemy^[19]
• Digital Product Management: Modern Fundamentals – Coursera^[20]
• Product Management for Journalists – University of Texas Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas^[21]

Websites

• Mind the Product^[22]
• RomanPichler.com^[23]
• The Black Box of Product Management^[24]

Books

• Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams^[25]
• Product Management for Dummies^[26]
• Product Management in Practice: A Real-World Guide to the Key Connective Role of the 21st Century^[27]

Articles

• What it Takes to Become a Great Product Manager^[28]
• 8 Tips for Landing Your First Product Manager Role^[29]

At its most basic, product management is the intersection of the user, technology, and business needs of an organization (Figure 1). This role is typically an expert in at least one area, but should be conversant across all three sectors to be effective.

This intersection of functions further emphasizes the need for a product manager to be broadly conversant across an organization’s activities. Product management represents a unique role in media companies, where the business and editorial sides have traditionally been viewed as separate and non-interacting functions. But the business and technology climate in the media industry now requires organizations to consider how these functions relate to and affect one another  – how technology affects distribution, how users’ habits affect profitability, and how to best engage platforms in the service of both the business’s and audience’s needs.

Project versus Product Management

Sometimes the terms project and product management are used interchangeably. But they are different roles, even if they are handled in some manner by the same person. Project management is specifically focused on delivering project functionality – identifying features, scheduling their execution, and making sure a timeline is adhered to. Projects tend to have a defined beginning and ending. Product management encompasses the broader strategic implications of the entire digital product and its relationship to the organization’s overall strategy. The function can also be described as product leadership or development, although these are often defined as different roles, with product leadership referring to the management of product managers and overall product strategy. Product development specifically focuses on the engineering requirements of the product life cycle.

Methodologies and Processes

Design Thinking

A product manager is responsible for all phases of a product’s lifecycle, from the conception of the idea, through planning, development, testing, the launch and assessment phases, until the product is retired. A methodology that is often used in assisting with the product management process is Design Thinking, originated by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford better known as the d.School^[30] in conjunction with the creativity firm IDEO^[31] Design thinking is a process by which problems are better understood and solved by listening to and developing empathy for potential users. It provides methods for inspiring creativity in a structured manner and quickly developing a prototype for testing and gaining feedback. Design thinking employs various techniques, including brainstorming problem approaches and quickly prototyping a set of solutions that can be tested with users. (You can read more about this process in the Ideation chapter^[32] of this book.

Agile Methodology

Another phrase often associated with product management is Agile Development. Agile methodologies are characterized as more of a philosophy than a process, based on what is known as the Agile Manifesto^[37] It values trust in individuals, completion of tasks and responsiveness to change.

Agile methodologies are designed to allow products to respond quickly to market needs and changes by being iterative and incremental. Instead of a long, comprehensive development cycle (traditionally known as the waterfall method), products are broken down into smaller pieces or sprints, each creating a deliverable. Communication between product team members is usually handled by daily scrums, or short, stand-up meetings, that allow collaborators to check in on a regular basis.

During a scrum meeting, team members specifically address only three questions: 1) What have you completed? 2) What are you working on? 3) What would prevent you from completing your next activity? Team members typically stand (no leaning!) for these meetings, so that no one gets too comfortable, and they can quickly move on to their work activities.

An agile sprint culminates with user testing that should lead to modifications for the next sprint and be incorporated throughout product development. As with Design Thinking, feedback from the user testing phase is incorporated in each iteration of the product.

Most product management processes adopt practices from both design thinking and agile development. But the main goal is to remain spry, understand and respond to needs, and to adapt to the environment throughout the development cycle.

Conclusion

As digital products mature, product management will need to be comprehended as a core process and responsibility of media, as opposed to a technology sideline, offshoot, or tangential activity. As media organizations receive increased scrutiny for the accuracy and truthfulness of their reporting, the digital projects they create will be expected to demonstrate the same responsibilities and judgment.

The role of digital product management is being fulfilled, at least in some of the most innovative news organizations, by the proliferation of technology products presented by news organizations. The broad range of digital media products – websites, mobile applications, bots, and data interactives – demonstrate an increasing complexity as related to news distribution and audience engagement. There are several themes that newsrooms will need to address in developing a product culture, which include the need to work in cross-functional teams; an emphasis on empathy, problem solving and creating value for users; an attention to data; and the need to recruit and develop resources with a combination of communication skills, business sense, and technology expertise.

Cindy Royal, Ph.D., is director of the Media Innovation Lab at Texas State University’s School of  Journalism and Mass Communication. Reach her on Twitter at @cindyroyal. 

Editor’s Note: This chapter is new and will undergo its first use and testing in Fall 2018. This chapter is not yet available in the print edition. You can leave feedback using Hypothes.is annotations on the chapter, or contact us.