Can I borrow a minute from you please!
Over my career, I have worked on a variety of products — B2B call center management products, cloud infrastructure management products, databases, content search platforms, and networking products. One of the most challenging roles that I have done is Platform Product Management.
Why is Platform Product Management a challenge?
Application product managers are focused on building products for end-users whether it is consumers or enterprise users. However, as a platform Product Manager, I serve the needs of multiple partners in the ecosystem so that they in turn can build products for these end-users. I need to step back, look at the big picture, identify capabilities needed across multiple products, and envision the end-user capabilities that the products built on the platform could offer. I then work backward to define the platform vision and develop its roadmap.
Thus a Platform product manager must envision the solution that will power the solutions of the other product managers that will build their products on the platform.
On the plus side, I get to work with a variety of teams. But that also means saying “no” to a lot of teams and partners in order to effectively prioritize and ensure that the platform can achieve its cross-product vision rather than solve problems for a single product. Effective communication and negotiation skills must be called upon several times a day. Ultimately, platforms are built through successful relationships between the platform team and its stakeholders.
Another key challenge is appropriately balancing short-term wins versus long-term platform investments. A quick win could end up creating tech debt that hurts the platform and its partners over time. Adding capabilities that narrowly serve a single use case or do not account for scale or additional extensions that will be needed over time is an example of this. Building a platform requires long-term planning with an eye toward a successful platform that serves as the foundation for several businesses. Hence, the prioritization framework must additionally account for longevity. Every change introduced to the platform must ensure backward compatibility. We simply can’t introduce changes that break our partners’ applications. All the applications based on the previous version must continue to work until everyone using the platform has had sufficient time to migrate.
Why does Platform Product Management Matter?
Put simply, economies of scale. It helps to pay the development cost once and leverage it several times over. Rather than each team reinventing the wheel, platform users are able to focus their effort on differentiating features for their products and iterate faster. Users also benefit from the consistency of features vs each product providing the same capability in different ways. After incurring the development cost once and optimizing operations, the platform unlocks new use cases and enables rapid value creation.
The ecosystem of developers and partners who build on the platform has a multiplier effect that generates enormous value for the end-user.
What does success look like?
As a platform product manager, oftentimes you find yourself in the background, ensuring that the business is running smoothly. A feature released without appropriate safeguards can impact multiple products serving millions of users in a matter of seconds and materially impact the business revenue. Thus availability, reliability, and performance end up being the core metrics you live by.
Once you have a reliable, available, and performant platform, it becomes easy to attract users. The number of use cases the platform can support, how quickly these use cases can be onboarded, and how satisfied the users of the platform are the next set of core metrics to evaluate.
Should you consider it?
A resounding yes. If you are a systems thinker and enjoy working with a variety of teams and stakeholders, this is a role for you. It is a role in which I have developed multiple core skills and lasting relationships. It is also the role in which I have built products with the highest leverage and seeing multiple experiences light up easily proving immense value to end-users has been extremely satisfying!
