A lot of product managers spend their time focused on just one product. They’re centered on its plans, features, and the user experience. But in bigger companies, the really important strategy happens with the product portfolio.
This is where leaders need to juggle different products and projects, each at a different point in its life. It’s tricky because it involves developing new ideas, deciding where to allocate funding, and maybe the hardest part, deciding when to end a product’s life.
Most product managers work on one product at a time, but it’s important to manage an entire group of products. It takes the skill of an experienced investor to handle a mix of products that all help achieve the company’s goals.
Amarachi Nnochiri is a senior product manager who’s great at product portfolio strategy. She doesn’t just build products; she plans a smart system, knowing when to support a successful product, when to try a new idea, and when to end a product.
Amarachi employs methods that enable her to grasp the whole portfolio clearly. She often uses the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Matrix to sort products by how popular they are and how fast they’re growing.
This enables her to identify Stars (products with high growth and popularity that she should invest in), Cash Cows (products with low growth but high popularity, used for profit), Question Marks (products with high growth but low popularity, used for experimenting), and Dogs (products with low growth and popularity that she might end). This method shows her how healthy the entire portfolio is.
To keep a balance between short-term wins and long-term goals, Amarachi uses McKinsey’s Three Horizons model. This method guides her to split product investments into three groups: Horizon 1 focuses on making core business products better, Horizon 2 explores new chances, and Horizon 3 is for coming up with new, long-term ideas (often called moonshots).
By ensuring the portfolio has a good mix of projects in all three groups, she confirms the company is thriving now and is well-positioned for the coming years.
One of her key jobs is deciding what to focus on and where to put resources. Many teams use methods like RICE or ROI to decide what features to include in a product, Amarachi uses them for the whole portfolio.
She compares the possible return on a new feature for an old product with the risk of a new Horizon 3 product.
She is faced with the burden associated with these tradeoffs, like the problem of phasing out a product cherished by a dedicated user base, instead of allocating those assets to a product designed to expand and cater to a larger audience.
In conclusion, Amarachi’s leadership is what turns a collection of individual products into a strong product system.
She’s skilled at matching business plans, customer needs, and product investments.
Her work makes sure that every product decision, from small features to big risks, helps the company do well in the long run.
She’s not just a product manager; she’s a strategist, building a stable future one product decision at a time.
