Benoit des Ligneris describes a model in his article about the environment in which product management has to navigate. This environment has many influences, and a product evolves with influences from many sources. The Maslov inspired pyramid of Product Managers needs starts with real world dependencies. The market is the basis for any product, hence is the most needed input to any product and the product management. Further in the article Benoit describes the individual layers and why they are relevant to the Product Management organisation.
While objectively everybody will agree a Product Manager will need to mediate between these layers, it may be worthwhile to evaluate the level of influence each individual layer has in a particular organisation. Most often the influence on the product is reversed and higher levels influence outcomes more than they should.
It’s the product management organisations responsibility to feed the product by its needs and not just represent but balance all layers in the decision management process. A lot like in the Maslov pyramid, a healthy product starts with basic needs.
A useful and visual mental model that represent the product management role in relation to its environment.
Source: The pyramid of the product manager needs (Maslow inspired)
