Product Management in Practice, 2nd Edition

Chapter 15. In Good Times and Bad

As of early 2022, there were about 1.96 million apps in the Apple App Store and 2.87 million in the Google Play Store according to mobile app agency BuildFire.

According to that same source, the average smartphone owner uses 10 mobile apps on a daily basis and 30 apps total every month.

That leaves a lot of disappointed product managers.

I cite these statistics not to be fatalistic, but rather to set the expectation that building a product destined for the meteoric success associated with companies like Apple, Netflix, Facebook, or Google is exceptionally rare. Great product managers work on products that fail all the time. There are no “best practices,” no perfect prioritization frameworks, no Agile-cadabra magic words that will guarantee the success of your product.

Product managers working on established and successful products face their own set of challenges that can be just as galling. Established companies tend to become risk averse, bureaucratic, and political, at times making it difficult to implement minor changes that have clear user value. Even when the numbers are going in the right direction—especially when the numbers are going in the right direction—getting out ahead of fast-changing user needs can prove incredibly difficult.

Product management is not an easy job, but the practice of product management can make everybody’s job easier. It can help programmers become better communicators, marketers become more excited about technical ...