Product management is a cross-functional, multidisciplinary role that spans nearly every part of an organization and is critical to its success. As such, there’s a long and widely held belief that it must be an in-house, full-time role, far too important to be done by consultants or contractors.
The problem is, that isn’t true. It’s an outdated and inaccurate opinion.
We can back this up with decades of collective first-hand product management consulting experience.
But first, let’s do a quick, high-level review of product management because if you’re anything like us, you’ve been trying to explain your job at dinner parties for about 20 years now…
Product management is the process of taking a product from vision to planning to production to market, overseeing all the strategic and tactical elements required to complete that process successfully. Here we’re referencing digital products such as websites, apps, and software. As digital product managers, we build strategic roadmaps (plans) to guide the design and development (engineering) of these products. We also manage the execution and go-to-market process and monitor the performance of these products in the market using data, analytics, and other customer feedback and behavior.
We do this iteratively, building on our products over time and responding to customer feedback, all while managing the various cross-functional teams, communications, and systems necessary to make it happen efficiently. We work with every part of a company that contributes to a product—including finance, marketing, sales, customer support, legal, and more—to ensure everyone remains aligned on what’s happening with the product, when it’s happening, and why so that the entire business can collectively work towards the same strategic goals.
Product management is a complex and nuanced role that can vary widely depending on the environment in which it is practiced.
For example, startup product management is vastly different from product management within an enterprise organization. In an enterprise, there are lots of resources to support you, but things take longer to get done. In a startup, teams operate with very lean resources and things move quickly, with people wearing many hats.
In a large company, you may have executive product leaders, directors, middle managers, and individual contributors. In a startup, you likely have a Head of Product or a solo Senior Product Manager who does it all themselves. You get the idea.
Now that you have a high-level idea of what product management does and how interwoven it is within an organization, you can see why it’s often assumed it should be in-house or full-time to be effective. It’s an important position!
A Product Management Consultant is a flexible, hyper-efficient, resource who can provide experienced product management support when companies need help. They usually offer additional options versus full-time or in-house product hires, such as advisory, fractional, or part-time services. Their product experience often spans a wider variety of companies, industries, products, and challenges than your average in-house product manager, and they serve several functional and technical needs.
Product Consultants generally bring a nice blend of strategic chops and tactical execution skills, putting them in a “Super IC” category that indicates they can do everything and do it well, from defining product strategy to designing product operations and drafting product requirements. They’re used to onboarding into new teams, settings, and projects, and entering challenging situations and complex product landscapes. They know how to operate with autonomy, efficiency, and diplomacy and bring objective perspectives and solutions wherever they go.
It’s also important to be clear about what a Product Management Consultant is not. They are not Management Consultants or Business Consultants. These tend to be more generalized roles focused on business operations, strategy, and company profitability. These consultants provide great value but don’t replace the niche experience, strategic product development knowledge, and nuanced skillset a Product Management Consultant brings.
A Product Management Consultant is also very different from a Project Manager. Project-focused consultants are generally responsible for managing timelines, budgets, and resources; and keeping those pieces of a project on track. While that can sometimes be part of the scope that a Product Management Consultant is tasked with, it is not generally core to the strategic or tactical responsibility in a Product Management role. It should be differentiated when talking about Product vs. Project Management roles to avoid confusion between the two, which is common in scenarios where Product Management is not well understood.
There are many scenarios when Product Management Consultants can add value, but there are a few where they are especially impactful.
You need four or five months of gap coverage while a product manager is on parental leave.
You’re seeing turnover or simultaneously hiring for multiple product management roles.
You’re trying to hire your first in-house product person and aren’t sure what you need or where to start.
You need product support but aren’t ready for full-time coverage yet.
You’re doing a big turnaround or reorg and have several urgent needs across the team.
You need fresh eyes and ears on a new product strategy and roadmap.
Your in-house product team is a bit junior and needs additional training or coaching.
You’re short on product leadership and would benefit from interim coverage.
Your product development isn't running smoothly or efficiently.
In general, Product Consultants are a useful and valuable resource any time an FTE product management hire isn't right for your needs, you can’t find the right person, and/or a gap is too costly. Even fractional or part-time Product Consultants add significant value. And because they are hyper-efficient and more selective with their time management (read: limiting the deluge of all-day meetings), you will often see full-time value from a part-time product consultant. That’s what we like to call a win-win.
Think of a product manager going on parental leave for four or five months. You're not hiring a full-time person to replace them, but going so long without someone in that critical role would be disastrous for the rest of your team, and your roadmap. There’s not enough capacity within the team to pick up the extra work, and the long-term impacts of the gap could be costly and far-reaching. A product management consultant is a perfect solution in this scenario. They’re specialized, flexible, and don’t require the commitment of a full-time hire. They can onboard fast, and be there to transfer knowledge back to your FTE when they return. The cross-functional team has support while the product manager is on leave, high-priority work continues forward, and your product manager returns to a well-oiled machine.
Product Consultants can also be an extremely valuable resource for larger organizations during turnover, hyper-growth, or stalled growth. Gaps in product organizations are never good, especially when they’re due to turnover. That generally indicates unrest amongst the team and impacts more than just the product (think cross-functional, engineering strain, etc.). There’s no need to white-knuckle it because you’ve had turnover on your product management team. Product Consultants are an excellent option when turnover occurs unexpectedly, and you need to keep the wheels on the bus and the roadmap moving in the meantime.
Product Consultants are also a great interim solution when your teams are trying to hire for multiple roles—they can immerse quickly, deliver valuable work during the hiring process, help onboard your new hires when you find them, and then lift out. Another win-win. The value is the same during hyper-growth when you need extra velocity but aren’t sure you want to add permanent headcount.
Product Consultants can also be a great option when you’re an earlier-stage startup and you’ve decided to explore making your first in-house product hire. This is often an important inflection point. It likely means you’re growing, the scope of the product work can no longer be done by the founding team, and you’re ready to bring someone in to make things more official (and efficient) within product development. It’s both an exciting and scary time. We’ve seen many companies make the wrong hire more than once, and as we’ve discussed, this is a critical hire so you want to get it right.
Working with a product consultant to help you deliver valuable work and figure out the right profile for your first product hire is an ideal solution. They’ll do a few things in parallel. They’ll help you put key foundational processes in place for your product management practice (think basic intake criteria for new work, ensuring you have a product strategy to work from, etc.), help you prioritize important work and get things delivered, all while getting to know your company and team a bit better.
That work helps inform the additional and equally important work track—observing the type of product skills, experience, and context your eventual in-house hire will need, and crafting the job description for your role. Once they do that, they’ll help you screen candidates (or better yet, introduce you to the perfect person), make a hire, onboard them to the product role, and set everyone up for success. This is a very effective way to use a part-time product consultant in the short term to suit your startup needs until you’ve found the ideal long-term product fit for your small but growing team.
Sometimes, there is work to be done that doesn’t fit into the typical full-time box. Rather than only having all-or-nothing options, Product Consultants are a fantastic alternative to full-time product managers. Part-time product support has been an effective addition in situations like the extra pre-holiday push for e-commerce companies (if you’ve worked for one, you know exactly what we’re talking about), a re-platform or similar initiative with an immovable launch date, or an end of year opex surplus.
Part-time is also effective when there is project-based product work or squad-based work that allows the scope of the product manager’s focus to be limited or fixed in some way, giving them more control over their capacity. For example, I was a half-time product consultant for two years in a scenario where the team was myself, one full-time backend developer, a half-time front-end developer, and a half-time UX designer. Between us with everyone's workload on the product, it balanced perfectly. Had I been full-time, half of that would have been wasted spend for the client.
During a big turnaround or reorganization, having seasoned Product Consultants is an impactful way to add stability and consistency to your product development team. There is usually turnover, extensive process changes, leadership changes, new hiring, and many other shifts during reorgs and digital transformations. Everything from the product to the culture to how teams operate can change, often leaving the remaining team members feeling vulnerable and uncertain of what’s to come. This affects inflight work, team velocity, morale, business outcomes, and more.
Leveraging Product Consultants during a turnaround ensures your teams are supported and high-priority work stays on track. This consistency provides stability for remaining team members and allows for an objective party—unattached to the politics of internal issues—to support them. A product consultant also sees processes, team dynamics, and collaboration challenges from angles internal team members may not, bringing new insights and opportunities. In addition, having experienced, energetic, and talented resources to aid in the transition and challenges that come with any turnaround effort is essential to its success. Product Consultants are a natural choice for this challenge.
First, they’ve worked with more companies and teams than your average product manager. Due to the nature of consulting, they work in a greater variety of situations, gaining more context and experience with which to recognize opportunities and solve problems. They’ve seen tension, internal politics, struggling organizations—you name it. They’ve counseled frustrated CEOs, CPOs, and founders, and helped teams identify the real areas they should be addressing after banging their heads against the wall for months (or years).
This same lens can be applied to the product and the product operations. Fresh eyes help identify immediate low-hanging fruit, optimization opportunities, and innovative ideas for the roadmap. They provoke questions and conversations with product teams that may be feeling stale or uninspired. They challenge assumptions or previously held beliefs by leadership or stakeholders and spark renewed dialogue around product opportunities, simply by being a new (while very experienced) voice in the room. It adds so much value and momentum for any product team, stagnant or not.
This also applies to processes. In a matter of weeks, a product consultant can assess how a product development organization works and see immediate opportunities for improvement. This isn’t to say everything will be a quick fix, but there are generally always short-term optimizations to be gained, as well as plenty of long-term recommendations for growth.
Product Consultants bring a ton of experience, have the unique ability to onboard quickly and provide a fresh perspective on your product, team, and processes. This immediately identifies new ideas and opportunities for tweaks and improvements that can add value to your business in both the short and long term.
Another instance where Product Consultants can be hugely helpful is when your in-house product team is talented and eager to learn, but isn’t quite at the skill level you need to get the job done. A product consultant can work with you to identify areas where your team needs to improve and can help train and upskill them with practical, hands-on expertise. They can provide workshops and custom materials designed specifically for the subject matters your team needs to focus on, and can even stick around beyond their initial contract to coach and/or mentor them in certain areas.
This is a great way to provide continuing education to a more junior product team and help upskill them in focused practice areas within product management.
Product leadership is a critical role, and if you have a product team, you can’t be without it. Even if you plan to keep your product leadership roles in-house/full-time, Product Consultants can be a great interim solution if you’re without a product leader for any reason, from parental leave or unexpected vacancies to hiring for multiple roles at once.
A seasoned Product Leadership Consultant can add value in many ways. Filling the gap while you’re without a leader keeps your team supported, provides experienced leadership to manage up and down while there’s critical work in flight, ensures there's someone experienced involved in your hiring process, and more. It also allows for better knowledge transfer and onboarding when your eventual in-house leader is found or when your FTE returns from their leave.
This is also true for earlier-stage companies that aren't ready for a full-time hire. A fractional or advisory product leader is a valuable way to ensure you’re getting the expertise you need at the critical early stages of a product, without the need to hire full-time. Sound product and go-to-market strategies are so important, and ensuring you have product management leadership is critical.
A product consultant can quickly identify where inefficiencies and gaps exist in process and product development workflows. Because of their objectivity, a product consultant can quickly spot those gaps and opportunities, and given their experience, they often have a large toolkit of potential solutions to pull from. Product Consultants can add a lot of value in this area in just one sprint, so this can be an effective and fast way to revamp your process or make small changes that add big efficiencies.
Of course, where there are pros, there are some cons as well. Product Consultants can be slightly more expensive (hour for hour) than in-house product hires. That said, it shouldn’t be an apples-to-apples comparison between the two. Many differences make the cost of Product Consultants well worth it—they offer the flexibility you won't have with FTEs, often bring broader experience, don’t expect a long-term commitment, are hyper-efficient, and are available immediately and short-term. Even if you’re comparing on cost alone, don’t forget to include the fringe costs of an FTE, such as bonuses, benefits, talent acquisition, and the harder-to-calculate, broader-reaching costs of a bad hire.
Product Consultants may have multiple clients, so you may not have full control over their calendar. Ideally, that shouldn’t affect your workflow or quality. In our experience, consultants are very skilled at managing their time. Plus, with niche expertise, a little can go a long way. Even limited hours can be very valuable for your business. But a word of advice: Ensure you set clear goals and expectations, use your time together efficiently, and create clear communication channels to stay updated on progress so you’re always on the same page. Some Product Consultants are open to charging a bit more for additional calendar availability so if you need more support and cost isn’t an issue, don’t hesitate to ask.
Finally, your internal team may feel threatened by a consultant’s presence. Sometimes consultants can get a bad rap, or it can indicate larger issues are afoot. But, there’s a lot you can do to set up both your consultant and your team for success.
We provide messaging you can use to explain who we are and what we do, what we’ll be helping with, our goals in working with you, and more. We also dive in with teams on day one, often meeting with many team members in the first two weeks to understand their experiences and get familiar with the organization. We try to be as transparent as possible about our scope and goals early and often and collaborate closely with internal teams throughout our work, ideally putting them at ease and making their jobs easier.
A great product consultant will feel like an invested, immersed part of your team regardless of their employment status on paper. Even if they’re part-time, they should be fully invested in solving the problems and achieving the goals they’re there to help achieve. The engineers should feel that the Product Consultant is a critical part of their cross-functional team. Business stakeholders should rely on them for updates and communications. Marketing should partner with them regularly on value prop messaging and go-to-market content for social. No one should be talking about or thinking about their on-paper employment status.
Early in my independent product consulting career, I managed the mobile shopping app for ModCloth. I remember every couple of months, someone on the team would say in surprise, ‘Wait, you’re a contractor?!’ I always prided myself on those moments. Not only did the team forget that I was a contractor, but they often didn’t realize I was part-time. This was not because I worked full-time hours or appeared more committed than anyone else on the team. It was because I was just as involved, immersed, and engrained as anyone else, regardless of my employment status.
With anyone you hire, setting clear goals, aligning on success criteria, communicating openly, and sharing feedback are all critical aspects of that person’s success. Company leadership is responsible for setting the tone in these areas, whether it’s for a new FTE or a consultant. Regardless of their status, it’s the quality of the person and their work that counts.
Gaps in product management roles can be extremely costly and far-reaching, impacting nearly every part of an organization. It’s best to avoid them if possible and there are plenty of accessible and attractive ways to do that. Luckily, product management doesn’t need to be in-house or full-time to be effective and wildly successful, and we hope those antiquated and inaccurate opinions are fading fast.
Product Management Consultants are a hyper-efficient, valuable, and impactful alternative, and there are many situations where they are arguably better suited than FTEs. Don’t be afraid to leverage one! We may be biased, but we think they’re pretty awesome—and we know they add tons of value.
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