Agile product management is an approach to product development where teams iterate frequently and continuously adapt the roadmap to feedback and insights.

Companies can conduct data-driven product management using agile best practices, which provide adaptability and continuous delivery.

So what are the key points that will shape product management in 2023? Let’s take a look at the top 5 best practices.

Achieving product strategy results is one thing; sustaining them is another

Think about it this way: You wouldn't start building a house without an architect or contractor in charge. And yet many founders make their own product decisions without consulting anyone else on the team — which can lead to costly mistakes down the line.

A well-defined product strategy is a big picture that guides your product development and growth in the right direction. To build a successful business, you need to have a clear focus on what you want to achieve and how you want to get there. This is where product strategy comes in handy.

Developing a product strategy starts with defining the role of your product in the market, which can be done by answering key questions:

  • Why does your company exist?
  • What problem are you solving?
  • Who is your target customer?
  • What value do you provide?
  • What problem do you solve for your customers?
  • How will they know if they need your service or product?

These answers form the basis for everything else that follows in the rest of your strategy documentation.

Deliver what your customers want, not what you think they need

If you're building a product or service, chances are you have an idea in mind of what that product or service should be. You may even have a good idea of customer needs. But have you confirmed your assumptions and actually asked the customer?

Agile product management is a way of making high-quality, marketable products people love. To do this, you need to understand your customers and how they want to use your product, then deliver what they want.

In such cases, you can use email, social media, and other content types to conduct customer surveys and market research, to learn more about their needs and wants.

When it comes to emails, make sure to use a DMARC tool to ensure the messages you send go from your company’s name. You'll also need to continuously monitor what's happening in the market so you can adapt your product strategy accordingly.

The agile product strategy process starts by defining your ideal customer persona: Someone who represents the target demographic of your product.

To help figure out which features are most important, start by asking your ideal customers what problems they're trying to solve. Then, ask them how they're currently addressing those problems, and see if the solutions they're using match up with what you have to offer.

If they're not getting their desired results from their current solution, then they may be open to trying something new — or at least willing to consider it if it seems like it might work better than what they're already doing on their own.

Darshan Somashekar, who runs gaming site Hearts.land, suggests mirroring an ideal customer.

“We often sit down with customers to understand the root of their issues and how they come about. It often leads to new insights.”

There's no “one-size-fits-all” product roadmap

The future of product management is in the hands of the customer. New technologies emerge every day, and it’s never been harder than now to stay up-to-date with everything that’s happening.

Creating goal-oriented product roadmaps will help you stay focused on what matters most: Your customers, your business goals, and your vision for the future of your products. Without them, you might end up building features that nobody needs or wants.

Product roadmaps are amazing tools for communicating and planning a product’s future. A goal-oriented summary that maps out the vision and direction of your product offering will help you answer these questions by providing a visual representation of where your product is headed, including which features will be built, when they’ll be launched, and what they’ll do once they’re live.

A good product roadmap will include:

  • Goals — What do you want to achieve with your product? What are the most important features and functions?
  • Timeline — When will each goal be completed?
  • Priority — Which goals should be tackled first?
  • Personas — Who is your target audience? What are their needs?

In summary, planning your product roadmap means breaking up your larger vision into smaller, individual goals. From there, you can break down those goals into features and user stories. It’ll do wonders for efficiency, and it’ll give each member of your team more guidance.

Tailored, thoughtful, and empathetic customer experiences

In 2023, as the economy continues to struggle and people become even more price-conscious, businesses will have their work cut out for them when it comes to gaining customers' trust.

Implementing personalization tactics based on our individual needs and preferences will be a great way to create great customer experiences. As technology leaps forward, so will our ability to measure individual consumer requirements and meet them appropriately.

Build a reporting dashboard that displays key product success metrics

The focus of customer experience management has shifted from conventional marketing techniques to human-centered service visions. This generation is more interested in personalized, seamless, and smart experiences rather than individual attention and product offerings. 

A key product success metric is a well-defined and easily measured indicator related to the success of a product. It’s a critical aspect of managing the product throughout its lifecycle.

A good understanding of your key product success metrics will help you determine which features might be most important for your target market. But it's important to remember that there isn't always a one-size-fits-all solution; consider which metrics will have the biggest impact on your business. The last thing you want is to spend lots of time developing features that don't get measurable results.

Instead of just testing what you think will work, try to use metrics to find out what is actually working on your product. If a specific feature isn't performing as well as you'd hoped, analyze why that is and determine whether you can remove it from the experience.

If there’re complaints about how something looks, determine if you're constrained by certain design requirements and whether there's an easy fix. When you have tracked metrics over time and can see that they're improving, chances are that you're on the right track with your product.

Let’s recap

The agile method of product management is increasingly becoming the way to do things. It presents a more user-friendly, adaptable, and dynamic method for developing products that are tailored to customer needs, rather than those of inefficient bureaucracy.

Through a combination of changes in the corporate sector and some expected advancements in technology, product management is likely to go through another major shift during 2023.

What does this mean for agile product management? It means that you should learn how to navigate uncertainty. Rather than take for granted what you know about product management now, it's important to keep an open mind, respond quickly to market change, and innovate at a greater pace.