Glad that the answer was helpful Nick. If the system creates some specific value for internal users and at the same time for the company, like reducing cost or increasing productivity, then I would view it as an internal, non-revenue-generating product.

Hey Roman,

This helps a lot, I couldn’t have asked for a better answer. I’m very grateful.

There is just 1 more question that came to my mind. How would you define an internal system which people inside a company use to run business processes, like an admin dashboard. It’s like a product with many features, but we don’t offer it to customers and monetise it.

Could this still be considered a product or is there a more descriptive name that clarifies its purpose better?

Hi Nick,

Thank you for sharing your feedback and question. I am glad that you find the article and the discussion in the comments helpful. I view a user journey as the steps that a user has to take in order to interact with the product and achieve a specific benefit. Say you want to shop for a new insurance online. You then have to find the insurance, evaluate it, make a purchase decision, register with the provider, and pay for it. A user journey can touch several products. In the sample I just stated, you might use the insurance company’s website, which might consist of several digital products, as well as the insurance product. Similarly, you might interact with different product variant. Image that after a few weeks, you decide to download an app offered by the insurance company and administer the policy on your phone.

Btw, I generally advise to work in a product focused way and organise around products, as I find products to be more stable than user journeys.

Does this help?

This is a great article and a gift that keeps on giving in the comments section. I wonder if you could also point to a crisp definition of a user journey and how that relates to products and product invariants?

Is a user journey generic enough that it can cut across multiple products and invariants, or does user journey have a more precise and constrained definition in your experience?

Thank you for your feedback and question Rattan. The main difference between a product and a service is that the latter has to be instantiated or provided, typically by one or more human beings, in order to create value. Facebook, for example, is a product that allows people to share and consume stories, photos, and videos. A Facebook-based service would be an offering where a video production company shoots bespoke videos for a person so that individual can post them on Facebook. Does this help?

Hi Erica,

Thank you for sharing your question and feedback. I would regard them as separate entities that form a product-service system together with the mobile app(s), thereby jointly creating value for your customers.

Does this help?

Your articles are always insightful and helpful as usual. Thank you for this post.

Should I as a product manager consider the support services we provide + our help centres as part of the product they are meant to support or as product entities on their own as they address specific needs of our customers ie getting help they need at the right time and speed to achieve a goal in say our mobile variant?

Many thanks.

Thank you for sharing your feedback and question Ved. If you manage a retail product, then I would assume that people from supply chain management, marketing, and other business units work with you and the dev team as stakeholders, as I explain in more detail in the article “Getting Stakeholder Engagement Right“. Hope this helps!

Excellent piece and the fact that it was written back in 2016 but has growing relevance even in 2019 speaks volumes of your foresight, of which I am a big fan.

Have a question – There are many horizontals in any sizeable organization- be it Supply Chain Management, Finance and Accounting, Marketing, Sales, Procurement etc.

In a typical project world, they all cater and support the various vertical entities in the organization- say Energy and Utilities, Manufacturing, Retail etc.

But in a Product world, would each of these be a part of the vertical set up? That is in a squad of resources dedicated to create Retail apps for my organization, would I have people competent in Supply Chain, F&A, Marketing etc.? And I, as a Product Manager, with all the vision, strategy and roadmap that I have for the product, with the limited budget that I have at hand, will have the liberty to deploy the resources at the optimal best manner possible? The horizontals therefore would become a part of the verticals? Is that understanding right?