The purpose of the Product Management process is to guide any IT product (such as an application, an infrastructure component, an IT service, documentation, or combination thereof) throughout its life cycle from inception to retirement and to be the ultimate owner of that product.

Outcomes

As a result of the successful implementation of this process:

• Robust, resilient products meet the IT service needs of IT customers
• Evolving IT products meet business needs
• Adequate resources are provided to carry out product development and support needs
• Each product has a long-term vision and direction

Scope

Product Management involves oversight through the entire life of a product.¹ This process will make the case for allocation of resources to this product (and hence its inclusion into the portfolio) and then provide stewardship over the efforts to create, launch, operate, maintain and finally retire the product. It will measure product value against objectives throughout the life cycle, and make recommendations for any modification of the product within the overall portfolio.

Designation as a product does not indicate the make-up of solutions and services that will be managed. It acts purely as the unit of management for this process. A product could be developed that becomes the basis for, or contributes to, many services. The converse is also possible.

This process has a symbiotic relationship with Portfolio Management; put another way, they could be seen as two sides of a coin. Whereas Portfolio Management takes an aggregate, balancing view across all IT activities, Product Management exists to champion the case for each IT solution, service or general capability which is managed as a product. In many cases, the Portfolio Management process will trigger a product life cycle by making a high-level, conceptual decision to pursue an opportunity area. Product Management is then responsible for developing the concept through to productive use while under the overall decision-making authority of Portfolio Management.

Includes

• Product vision
• Long-term product requirements management (as opposed to Solution Requirements, which manages requirements for a specific release)
• Product marketing and launch
• Ownership of the content that is included in the Service Catalog
• Oversight of ongoing product development and enhancement
• Approval authority over product change requests
• Initiation of necessary change requests to bring a new product release into production
• Product assessment and improvement
• Product retirement

Excludes

• Development (Realization category of processes)
• Product sales (Service Marketing and Sales)
• Project management

¹ See ITIL® V3 Service Strategy, Appendix B2 for further discussion.