Adjusting to Increasing Product Management Problems: Challenges and Improvement Proposals in One Software Company

Abstract

[Context and motivation] This paper seeks to understand the essential product management challenges that one software product company has recently started to face. [Question/problem] The paper illustrates how the case company, Maestro, has been forced to adjust its management style due to the increasingly complex and turbulent business environment. The paper further illustrates how the evolving management style has affected the way product requirements are managed. [Principal ideas/results] The comparison of our results with existing product management literature suggests that traditional product management approaches are becoming increasingly inadequate to deal with growing amounts of interpretations, requirements interdependencies and market turbulence. [Contribution] The findings of this paper indicate a need for examining literature from management and organizational sciences in order to expand the traditional view of requirements models as static and purely design-time entities towards new kinds of approaches that are more effective in dealing with complexity and turbulence. The paper eventually results with an identification of research gaps and important topics for future research.