June 2, 2023

One Big Thing: What is a “Product”?

Over the past few years, there has been a significant shift in the way that technology investment is managed within companies. More specifically, there has been a move away from traditional project management towards “product”-style management. In this blog series, we will explore why companies are making this switch and the benefits that product management can bring to technology investment.

Before we begin, let’s provide some definitions. In speaking with customers attempting to make the projects-to-products transition, I'm often reminded of the early days of the expansion of project and portfolio management (PPM). In those days, we would often run into customers asking the key question: "What IS a project for our organization?" They say history repeats itself and it sure does: Lots of customers are now asking "What is a product for us?"

This question is not always asked for the same reason, either. Some practitioners ask the question out of confusion as they don't see their organizations delivering traditional "products." A senior leader at a major government agency expressed concern that "we don't really have products." We then proceeded to have the following conversation:

ME: "Well, what do you fund?"
CUSTOMER: "Oh, we fund capabilities."
ME: "Do you also have capabilities managers that are responsible for the capability and its budget?"
CUSTOMER: "Yes, we do."
ME: "Sounds like that's a good start for the product discussion."

Whether or not you call them products will often be based on a series of factors:

Internal or external audience
Your particular industry
Nature of the value being delivered

As long as whatever it is meets the criteria outlined in my previous post, it could be considered a product for the purposes of making this transition.

Here are just some of the terms that we have heard used in various customer organizations and that align with our definition of products:

Capabilities
Platforms
Systems
Applications
Jobs (to be done)
Experiences
Value streams
Work streams
Business units (in cases in which a business unit focuses on a single product)

A key point is that this nomenclature often reflects the unique culture of your organization. As such, you should try to preserve it as best you can, while still applying the product management techniques we are discussing here. One key feature of Broadcom’s Clarity investment management platform is the ability to call your investments, or products, whatever people in your organization (or even in specific parts of the organization) want to call them. This reduces friction for getting people to adopt the centralized investment solution.

With all that said, it would probably be useful for us to agree on a common set of characteristics for a product. As a reminder, here are the PMBOK standard characteristics for a project:

Set of related activities
Definite beginning and end
Creates a unique product, service, or result
Receives explicit funding in the form of money and/or people

Based on our research among hundreds of customers, we have found products (or product-like substances) to have these characteristics:

A sustained asset
With an indeterminate lifespan, for example, an uncertain end date
Delivers value that can be articulated in reasonable business terms, like outcomes
Receives recurring explicit funding in the form of money and/or people

Items that meet these characteristics generally represent a product-type investment and would benefit from "product management" techniques. Our next blog will discuss how these different characteristics affect the way an organization approaches managing these types of investments.

Tag(s): Product Management , ValueOps , Rally , Clarity

Brian Nathanson

Brian Nathanson is a recovering certified Project Management Professional now serving as the Head of Product Management Clarity at Broadcom. He is the host of several popular Clarity-related customer webcasts (Office Hours, Release Previews, and the End-to-End Modern UX Demos) and has conducted many hours of both...

Other Resources You might be interested In

Blog August 22, 2025

Handling Incomplete User Stories at the End of an Iteration

When a team reaches the end of an iteration, some user stories may not be completed. This post details causes and options for managing these scenarios.

Read Blog

Blog August 20, 2025

What’s Hiding in Your Wiring Closets?

See why you must move from periodic audits to a state of perpetual awareness. Track every change, validate it against policy, and understand its impact.

Read Blog

Blog August 15, 2025

All Network Monitoring Tools Are Created Equal, Right?

See how observability platforms provide a unified view across multi-vendor environments and correlate network configuration changes with performance issues.

Read Blog

Blog August 15, 2025

Scale Observability, Streamline Operations with AppNeta Monitoring Policies

This post reveals how, with AppNeta’s monitoring policies, you can leverage a powerful framework for scalable, flexible, and accurate network observability.

Read Blog

Course August 14, 2025

AppNeta: Current Network Violation Map Dashboard

Learn how to configure and use the Current Network Violation Map dashboard in AppNeta to identify geographic regions impacted by WAN performance issues.

Go to Training

Course August 14, 2025

AppNeta On-Prem: Minimize Unplanned Downtime

Learn how to configure the AppNeta On-Prem environment following best practices for high availability and disaster recovery to maintain service continuity and minimize unplanned downtime.

Go to Training

Office Hours August 12, 2025

Rally Office Hours: August 7, 2025

Get tips on how to use the Capacity Planning feature in Rally, then follow the weekly Q&A session with Rally product experts.

View Recording

Blog August 11, 2025

dSeries Version 25.0 Boosts Insights, Security, and Operational Efficiency

Discover how ESP dSeries Workload Automation 25.0 represents a significant leap forward, making workload automation more secure, visible, and efficient.

Read Blog

Blog August 7, 2025

What Your SD-WAN Isn't Telling You

SD-WAN's limited view blinds it to underlay issues. Augment SD-WAN with end-to-end visibility to validate decisions and diagnose root causes for network resilience.

Read Blog