kerry-ok

Kerry is a marketer that loves to partner with the sales organization. As our SVP for Marketing, she is focused on sharing the Auth0 narrative across the globe. Before Auth0, Kerry spent many years working in B2B Tech at Skytap and F5 Networks. She spends her spare time with her family, dog, working in the yard, and enjoying fantasy football.

Chief Marketing Officer

Kerry Ok

The function of product management has changed greatly over the last decade. Product management is one of the fastest-growing roles and is moving to the center of business strategy (and not just for technology companies). 

As we enter a new year, we wondered:

* How will the product management function continue to adapt in 2021? 
* What will companies face as they look to hire product management talent? 
* What challenges will they face? 
* What will emerging technologies be impactful? 

We were fortunate to have Dave Wilner, Auth0 CRO, discuss (over Zoom, of course) these questions with five product management leaders from various sectors to get their predictions for 2021. Their answers gave us an inside look into the trends that will impact product management in the coming year.

## The Product Management Leaders

### David Flinton, Chief Innovation, Technology and Product Management Officer, [Xylem](https://www.xylem.com/)
In this role, David is responsible for leading the company's global technology and innovation activities as well as managing the entire life cycle of our offerings. His organization plays a critical role in ensuring Xylem develops advanced technologies and disruptive innovations that will create value for customers and commercialize them rapidly and effectively.

### Gene Farrell, CPO, [Smartsheet](https://www.smartsheet.com)
Gene Farrell is the Chief Product Officer at Smartsheet, responsible for driving product vision and technology strategy across the company's product management, product marketing, and experience design functions.

### Shiven Ramji, CPO, [Auth0](http://Auth0.com)
As Chief Product Officer, Shiven "Shiv" Ramji guides Auth0's product vision, innovation, design, and strategy, and brings more than 15 years of experience in B2B and B2C product management, engineering, operations, and business development.

### Thomas (Tido) Carriero, Chief Product Development Officer, [Twilio Segment](https://segment.com/)
Tido Carriero is the Chief Product Development Officer for Twilio Segment. He leads engineering, product, and design teams. Prior to his current role, he led the Product Engineering team at Dropbox and was an early member of the Facebook ads team before that.

### Ziad Ismail, Chief Product Officer, [Convoy](https://convoy.com/)
At Convoy, Ziad is responsible for data science, design, product management and program management. Before Convoy, Ziad was the Chief Product Officer of Marchex, Chief Executive Officer of CitiKey, and served in other leadership roles at Microsoft. 

## The 2021 Product Management Predictions 

**Dave Wilner**: _A recent blog post from [productboard](https://www.productboard.com/blog/golden-age-of-product-management-trends/) revealed that product management is one of the hottest and fastest-growing roles in business right now. In just two years, the number of product management roles in the US has grown by an astounding 32%, outpacing the increase in demand for overall roles by 5x. Do you think this trend will continue into 2021?_

**Tido Carriero**: Great question. So I think about the product role, maybe going back to the beginning of my career a little over a decade ago, and I just feel like the role has advanced, so, so, so much over the last decade or so. I think the appreciation of the craft itself, for instance, the expectations on both qualitative research, quantitative research, informed by numbers, just before you actually decide to start actually building something, the level of rigor to me just feels like it's gone through the roof.

I started my career in the late-stage startup days on Facebook. Honestly, we were "building stuff." We had an idea, slap it together in a hackathon, then spend another month or two getting it out. I was a product engineer at the time, but it just felt like that was the way the product was built a decade ago. Fast-forward to today, and it just wouldn't be acceptable for an engineering team to say, "Hey, we slapped together a hackathon with no qual or quant research, and we're going to ship this thing in two months." It just feels like the expectations have changed, which I think is great.

**David Flinton**: Yeah, and for a couple of reasons. One, we have a kind of renewed emphasis on the product management role. If you think about all of the companies that are offering a set of "products" in some form or fashion -- whether that's services, hardware, etc. -- then the ability to manage that really effectively is just as important for customers, meeting customer demands, and the business's success. And I don't see that changing. I think there's just an increased recognition across what those incentives are.

The second thing I would say is, if you think about the nature of a product management role, it's generally one of those roles that doesn't have a whole lot of folks reporting to them, in most organizations, but it requires them to move mountains when it comes to the product portfolio. That requires a lot of really strong leadership skills, influence, general management type of skills. And so, again, we look at this role as a potential feeder role for future general management roles. So, just in terms of succession planning, it becomes really important as well. I think there's a growing recognition of that.

**Ziad Ismail**: Yeah, I think that in general, there's obviously a lot of companies that are transforming themselves from traditional companies into technology companies. That, along with a couple of other factors, I think is going to drive substantial growth of the product management discipline. What I see happening is that in particular for senior principal-level talent, there will probably be more people that are going after that talent and focusing on it.

The reason is that, if you think about product management, it really is a discipline that is a 10X factor in the productivity of your organization. And it can be a 10X factor in a positive way or a 10X factor in a negative way. A typical product manager will work with maybe 10 people directly within a product engineering data science-type organization. If they do a great job, you immediately see tremendous leverage in how that team is operating and functioning. And if things aren't going well, then the whole thing, the whole enterprise is essentially struggling.

**Dave Wilner**: _How has the fact that product management is such an in-demand role impacted your organization?_

**Shiven Ramji**: Yeah, I think on our side, we've made a big investment in adding product managers to our team. So I remember when I joined, this is just going back over the last year, we had a relatively small product managing organization that has now increased at least 3X since I got here. So there's a sort of focus on investing in driving value for our customers. So that's the good stuff. 

I think the hard part is that there is still a need for this talent—it's very hard to hire product managers. And I think the other thing is, increasingly, the product managing role is getting fairly technical. So I think finding the right people continues to be a challenge for us. And I'd imagine similar companies like ours probably have the same or similar challenges.

**Ziad Ismail**: Every company is different. From Convoy's perspective, the things that make our experience in product management and technology hiring somewhat unique is that, first of all, we're a Seattle-based company. And so Seattle, if you think about it, it has two of the five largest technology companies in the world, with Amazon and Microsoft both headquartered here. But relative to the number of startups in Seattle, there really is a strange imbalance. If you think about the Bay Area having three of the five largest tech companies in the world, there are orders of magnitude more startups in the Bay Area than there are in Seattle.

I think that creates a very, very attractive opportunity to build startups in the Seattle area that I think exists nowhere else in the world. That certainly favors Convoy being one of the fastest-growing startups in Seattle, along with our peers, which generally are starting to thrive in this market.

**Dave Wilner**: _For many organizations, the real impact of product management was often misunderstood, and PM teams were not given the resources needed to carry out their best work. Today, they now own the product strategy and vision and play an active role in the future of organizations. Do you foresee any changes in 2021 around the strategic role that product management plays within a company?_

**Gene Farrell**: Yeah, absolutely. I think the way you articulated that was really spot-on. If you go back five, six, maybe even ten years, what has evolved into product manager roles was really program management. And program management, I think for a lot of companies, was more about keeping the trains running if you will, or coordinating and making sure that all the different functions involved in delivering a product or service to the market were working in harmony (or at least somewhat efficiently together). I think where product management has really broken out is this realization that it's not just about coordination; it's actually quarterbacking, right? It's actually leading and calling the plays and making the decisions, and applying business judgment. 

Before Smartsheet, I spent five years at AWS, and I think Amazon, in particular, was a bit of a pioneer in this space. We used to hire, and then they still hire, freshly minted MBAs out of some of the best schools in the world to come in as entry-level.

That was like the first product management role that you would take at Amazon. And they were really looking for the best and brightest, ambitious, strategic, innovative, driven folks that want to go build businesses. And they're competing with investment banks and all these other folks. So it's a very different profile. And I think that's why you've seen this evolution in the types of folks that pursue product management. And also, I think you're getting a lot more value out of the role when you have folks that are really thinking like owners and driving overall strategy for the business.

**Shiven Ramji**: Yeah, I think I still believe the product role can be different at a lot of companies and will probably continue to be that way. I think it's hard to say that there is just one type of product manager or product managing organization. Certainly, if you look at if you're building a software product versus a hardware product, there are different considerations.

But I do think the strategic value or importance of the product management organization is certainly appreciated more. So I think that product organizations are getting more attention and probably more funding. If you look at also just the recent trend of companies that have been successful again, using the stock market or financial performance as a metric, you see a lot of companies talk about cloud products leading growth and companies being successful because of that. And so I think there is more recognition now that product can be very impactful in an organization. And so supporting the growth and investing in an organization is being recognized for it. And I suspect it will continue next year.

**Dave Wilner**: _[SiriusDecisions' 2020 Pulse Survey](https://www.siriusdecisions.com/research-articles/t/thepulseresultsfromthesiriusdecisions2020brandandcommunicationssurvey) on Product Management Leadership Priorities cited "Improving the overall product innovation and life cycle management framework/process" as the number-one challenge facing PM organizations. What do you think is the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity for 2021?_

**David Flinton**: I think prioritization is our biggest challenge. As I mentioned, we've got a decent framework for managing our portfolio. The challenge comes in actually prioritizing the things that we should be working on and focusing on. I guess it's a really high-class problem. No shortage of really good things to work on, but with finite resources, management time, etc., you really have to get good at prioritizing. And we haven't cracked that one yet. It's something that we work on a lot.

It's gotten a little bit easier during the pandemic because it's really just completely crystallized what are our customers' most important pain points. And that has helped guide us to prioritizing everything in those funnels. So it's been a little bit easier because of the pandemic, but I think that's just a challenge that everybody wrestles with, and which we certainly wrestle with in our company.

**Gene Farrell**: Yeah, I think so, but it's a fairly nuanced answer. This product life cycle management, I think people would probably define that in very different ways. I framed the problem a little bit differently, particularly when you're bringing all of these really smart, talented people into product management roles, and they're all very ambitious. What I have found, both at Smartsheet and in prior roles, is that when you have great product leaders, you have no shortage of amazing ideas to go build. And the challenge is always where do you place your bets, and how do you actually innovate and build fast enough? Because it's much easier to come up with the idea than it is to actually go build it and then get it to market and then iterate based on the feedback and the signal you get from customers.

And so I think, in my experience, great product leaders live in this constant state of discontent because they have these big visions, and they spend a lot of time thinking two years out or, in some cases, three or four years out. And they're always anxious to see that vision come to fruition. And at the same time, I think many companies struggle from trying to do too much. So you have both impatience plus this inability to make hard trade-offs. I think those two things combined can make it really challenging. And so it's not surprising to me that product leaders would say, "We need to do a better job of life cycle management." I think what they're really saying is, "We need to figure out what's most important and most impactful to the business and execute better and faster while, at the same time, removing the distractions and stop putting resources and investment behind areas that are unlikely to pay dividends in the short term. Or just stop doing things that are no longer relevant."

**Dave Wilner**: _What are some emerging technologies that you think will impact product management in 2021?_

**Tido Carriero**: I feel like the keyword I've heard probably three times a week for the last two months at least is ML/AI (machine learning/artificial intelligence). I think, certainly, with Segment being a really large kind of hub of data, that feels like that is the technology that everyone's trying to emulate. Obviously, you have the famous Facebooks, Amazons, and Netflixes of the world, that have these incredible ranking and content recommendation systems. I do think every company in the world right now is looking to see how they can build that. To date, the Segment has spent more time getting data cleaned up and into an ML/AI-ready state. But one of the things we're most excited about with the Twilio acquisition is that Twilio has a bunch of ML/AI team. So by taking the clean data that is ML/AI-ready and helping produce offerings that I think will really solve and help mimic some of these capabilities that the Facebooks and Amazons, and Netflixes of the world have, we can democratize that kind of data for everyone.

I think there will be a lot of great products built in the next couple of years that really start to bring the promise of ML/AI. We've been talking about it for a very long time as an industry, but I think people are finally starting to get the data infrastructure set up. And then do all of that data collection and data cleaning work that will set us up for real success in ways that I think only a couple of companies to date have really, really leveraged.

**Dave Wilner**: _Is there any important product management trend for next year that we have not discussed today?_

**David Flinton**: Yeah, I think in general, more and more of our customers are concerned about the impact of their products on the environment. And some of that may be the nature of the industry that we work in. It's a little bit closer to home for us, working in the water industry, but I think that's a trend generally. And so product sustainability and product stewardship, I think, is something that is really important that we're starting to put some real emphasis on.

Not just understanding how many tons of CO2 my products emit or something over the course of the life cycle, but really looking at it from a more holistic kind of product life cycle approach to product sustainability. We should be leading the way in terms of take-back programs and things like that. But there's a lot of potential business model opportunities around that as well. It's not so much just a feel-good thing. There's a lot of potential business model opportunities around making the product sustainable. And I think we've got to take a more holistic approach to product sustainability, not just reporting the impact of our products, but really looking at it throughout the whole life cycle.

**Shiven Ramji**: I do think certain fundamentals of product management will get a lot of attention from an academic perspective, meaning product management will be taught more readily, and there will be some sort of certification that will come through. And I suspect even analyst firms will sort of jump on this trend of offering help, whether it's something that they've built or they utilized.

I do expect that both the teaching of and getting some certification around product management will become an emerging trend that is now being talked about. But I do see some leading organizations that are starting to invest in this idea that you can teach a lot more people to be product managers and hence accelerate their impact in all organizations.

To hear from the product management leaders directly, watch the video interviews. 

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<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />

Product Management Predictions for 2021

ankue_chauhan

I'm an interactive designer based in Vallauris, France. My aim is to work on great ideas with good people.

Product Designer

Ankur P Chauhan

We work, not only as designers or engineers but as peers in building something great together.

As designers working in software, we need to work hand-in-hand with the people who bring ideas to life. Yet, so often we tend to fall in the trap of placing artificial walls in front of these otherwise perfect opportunities to collaborate. I don’t think there is a one size fits all solution to bridging this gap but here’s my experience on approaching this at [Auth0](https://www.auth0.com/). 
**Caveat:** At [Auth0](https://www.auth0.com/), designers are part of remote teams, with people working in various timezones scattered across the world. Read more about that [here](https://medium.com/auth0-design/designing-remotely-at-auth0-5d9fb8499e29). 
![Image_hero](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/73h3xvCkkdGmdPrG4vB4fC/8ffa19ee362681ab00fa34df661a7816/hero)
And as designers working on the product itself, we work in the form of triads. Or in lay terms — a tech lead, a product manager and a product designer. Most teams include an agile practitioner and/or an engineering manager for guidance. But the work-to-be-done is primarily shaped by the triad itself. 

When I first started as a product designer, here at [Auth0](https://www.auth0.com/), many questions popped into my head. How does the product work and fit into our customers’ workflow? How will I provide the most benefit to the team and the triad? What do I care to invest time in learning, and how will that shape how I integrate into the team? And is the dashboard the most common way our customers interact with [Auth0](https://www.auth0.com/)?

![Image_1](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/53pDOHpDtflqN9kbjFYHjN/51295037ae1ce7ffeec3f962016bcc5a/image_1)

## Solving the Problems of Working on a Developer-Friendly Product
It’s natural to gravitate to working with the product manager on the team, as that is a more natural order of things. But considering the technical nature of the product, it felt key to also work closely with the technical lead on my team. This was strategic to help me answer some of the more complex questions. How fast you bridge this gap will vary depending on how technical you are willing to get. But no matter what interests you as a designer, you can still gain from this type of collaboration. 

This was a tricky path, since [Auth0](https://www.auth0.com/) at its core, is solving the **complex problem of identity**. And we’re focusing on the people that actually build software applications — the innovators. With this in mind, it can be difficult to break down everything you need to learn. Learning about identity, building for platforms, and [Auth0](https://www.auth0.com/) itself can quickly become overwhelming. And you might feel the need to get up to speed quickly to provide the team some benefit. 

![Image_2](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5xJuRIzMCwyqPowbiSfJuG/b7b737923dbc6725e52b39283a821d14/image_2)

## Finding the Right Ways to Collaborate
So my first thoughts were: it would be nice to start chipping away at these little walls built between product and engineering. I started by having regular check-ins with the technical lead on my team. He had been working at [Auth0](https://www.auth0.com/) for some time in many different roles and teams, so it was a great learning experience. 

_Quick aside: [Auth0](https://www.auth0.com/) helps to figure out what career path you want to move towards, isn’t that neat? It’s a combination of conversations about what direction you want to move in (whether in your direct field or not) and career-building activities._ 

**Coming back now —** 

These initial check-ins helped bridge goals and get a shared alignment on them. They were also increasingly helpful to start building trust and empathy for the different roles. Empathy is obviously important to designers but it can be magical when used internally among teams. I followed this up by getting more involved in technical meetings and scheduling regular monthly check-ins with all the engineers on the team and joining stand-ups, among other, engineering-led ceremonies. 

This is something that can be fruitful but doesn’t come naturally. As a designer, you need heads-down time to get your work done and devoting time for regular check-ins with engineers and joining technical, engineering-led meetings might seem like wasteful activity. However, it’s something necessary to help build context quickly. I learned that most of the engineers on the team cared deeply about the product, as well as, the experience of using it, all thanks to being mindful to take the time. 

![Image_3](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5Piv53NiCWNJzxQWuP48Yn/42a2343cb1ec85037f9656a2d064636a/image_3)

## Diving Deeper Into Bridging the Gaps
As mentioned earlier, unearthing this required a lot of effort and time on my part. It’s not something that is evident, especially, when you’re halfway across the world. The most important lesson I gained from these conversations is that it’s important to build relationships to learn from. For example— using the time with an engineer to discuss your ideas and them punching holes in it can be helpful, if you keep in mind that you’re working to the same eventual goal. This can help you work better by being held accountable for your role and being transparent when something doesn’t work. This is great for getting validation at every step of your process for building products too. 

Expanding these sessions into more collaborative experiences was an easy next step. We would discuss a feature, the technical lead would write the proposal for it, while I would simultaneously put together some rough mockups. This step felt key to sharing a vision of the feature itself; you made a decision together and not in a silo. The shared responsibility among everyone makes this better. This allowed the entire team to become more involved in user journey activities. A few months down and we’re trying to do more product-focused work together and keep making decisions together. An engineer from the team is even interested in moving towards a product-focused role. 

![Image_4](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4DJJoRrM3RzNGD7vN13wNl/dbd6adafae477b7ca32e10d9b6629b98/image_4)

## Speaking the Same Language so You Never Have to Hand off Designs
As a designer, you either learn development on the side or not at all. What’s great about this collaboration is that it fixes the gaps, wherever they are. By having engineers walk you through what the API design might look like or what the data model is, helps immensely. After all, that is a large part of the user experience that you, the designer, are responsible for. In any product, this way of thinking helps to make certain decisions about the experience and informs the interface. Are we querying to the database at some point? Maybe we need to show a loading state for the content because the frontend is already loaded. What if there’s a network error? How do we signal this to the user? All of these technical questions are great for designers to build a product that is able to answer them for the user. 

What it also enables is a common language. As a designer, you get better at communicating with your peers in the terms they understand and vice-versa. This is extremely beneficial, as you can, have discussions earlier in the process and inform your design work by any constraints that are required. Partly because you now have the tools to understand the technical side of things and partly because you will have constraints defined earlier, rather than later during what is traditionally known as a design-developer handoff. The more you continue collaborating, the less you’ll need something like a design-developer handoff. 

![Image_5](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/ivVx0VUydPKQ3YDLZsUmM/cd8ff243a69f5ab65b7dec0302057eac/image_5)

## You Just Can’t Fix Everything…
We use a famous quote by Henry Ford at Auth0 but I’m going to refrain from using that one. I’ll use this one instead.

> # _“Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”_ 
> # — Henry Ford

This entire process is slow, difficult and prone to errors because there is no tailored fit. I’ve had to invest time in setting up multiple video calls. Otherwise, it’s hard to get everyone’s individual perspective on the work. There is also a steep learning curve around the identity space and learning the technical arc of the product itself. Yet, the key has been to keep building a relationship with the members of the engineering team. Things get a lot smoother, even if they aren’t perfect. The dynamics of your team are constantly changing and this changes how you work with people. For this, I’d recommend reading a bit more about team dynamics and how hard that can be. I think transparency, communication, and feedback will still be topics for that.

### Key Takeaways
The few ways I’ve found to make this collaboration better:
1. Start conversations with engineers, they’ll be more than happy to help.
2. There’s a great deal of knowledge to go around, learn from it.
3. Join technical meetings and try to be more vocal with questions in these.
4. Start involving engineers in collaborative activities for product work, this helps bring in ideas.
5. Build things together, engineers bring the technical context and designers bind that into a simple journey.
6. Build relationships with these remote humans, you’ll cherish your time working wherever you are.
7. Don’t be afraid because things start getting technical, as designers, we have the ability to make things simpler to understand.
8. Be open when you don’t know things, this is the only way to get better.

## Conclusion
These key takeaways sum up the experience of working at Auth0 in a product team. We work, not only as designers or engineers but as peers in building something great together. Remote work can sometimes feel awkward because of the lack of real-world interaction. However, if designers take the leap to involve ourselves in parts outside of design, the outcome is definitely great. It’s less about passing the buck and having shared ownership of the product. 

For me — I’ve come to learn so much, not only about Auth0 but about identity by crossing over this bridge. This path continues to be fruitful for learning and carving out further distinct areas of growth. Collaborating with engineers not only enables me, as a designer, to understand and work efficiently but also helps other designers bring these ideas to their respective teams. On the design team, we’ve had many great discussions and action items come from these design-engineering workflows. I hope this helps you get ideas for collaborating with your engineering counterparts!
And if you find yourself really wanting to join a company that believes in a shared roadmap for identity between design and engineering— Auth0 is looking for product designers. Find out more at our jobs page here. 

Thanks for reading along!

"product-management"

Product Management Predictions for 2021

An Interview with Five Product Leaders

Designing impactful products by collaborating with engineers.

We work, not only as designers or engineers but as peers in building something great together.