5 Delightfully ‘Dirty’ Product Management Words… and Why We LOVE Them

Introduction

On a recent Profit Streams™ Partner call, some of our partners mentioned that certain words we absolutely love were ‘dirty words’ in their companies. Apparently, some Agile circles perceive words like ‘profit,’ ‘pricing,’ and ‘commitment’ as having negative connotations.

This is an absurd and tragic misconception about agility, innovation, and what it means to design a sustainable business.

Here, just for you, is a scintillating blog on some delightfully dirty words in Product Management. While you might want to hide this post from your boss or coworkers, you can also boldly share your newfound love for these dirty words, why they have a misguided, terrible reputation, why we love them, and why you should love them.

1. Profit

Negative Connotation: The word 'profit' often conjures up images of greedy corporations focused solely on the bottom line, with little regard for innovation or customer satisfaction. For software-enabled solutions, where creativity and user experience are paramount, profit can feel like a dirty word motivating a company-centric perspective vs. a customer-centric practice.

Why We Love It: Oh… come on. Do you really think you can create a sustainable business without profit? Are you just planning on losing money serving customers until you shut down your business?

Profit is the fuel that drives everything you do. It pays your salaries. It drives innovation. It funds all that investment in Agile. With profit, companies can reinvest in new technologies, hire top talent, or improve their products. Profit is not the enemy of anything; it's the enabler of everything. Our Profit Streams™ approach ensures that every decision made during software development aligns with long-term profitability, benefiting both the company AND its customers. Oh - profit pays for your job, so you should learn to love it as much as we do.

2. Pricing

Negative Connotation: Pricing is often seen as a necessary evil—a burdensome process that doesn’t even qualify as a backlog item for a cool agile organization. So… pricing is done poorly. A product manager dodges their responsibilities, and instead of developing a model of how their solution provides value, they simply review a few competitive websites or (horror) let the sales or finance team pick a price. Predictably, a thoughtless pricing process rarely produces a thoughtful price.

Why We Love It: We view pricing as a powerful tool for understanding, communicating, and capturing value. Effective pricing reflects the worth of your solution, ensuring that your company can sustain its operations while delivering exceptional value to your customers. And as your solution evolves, Solution Profitability Management™ helps you continue to sustain your business.

3. Feature

Negative Connotation: The term 'feature' can sometimes be synonymous with two pretty nasty habits: a focus on outputs over outcomes and feature creep. Focusing on features as outputs is common in companies that track their progress by delivering features (‘how many features have we shipped’) vs. companies that focus on customer outcomes and profit (‘how are our customers impacted’ and ‘what is our revenue’). Feature creep is similarly common: when you don’t understand the value of the problem you’re solving for your customer, it’s easy to deliver features that over-serve their needs. Both habits result in bloated solutions with unnecessary functionality that dilutes their value.

Why We Love It: Solutions are the means by which we provide value to our customers. Solutions are composed of features that define something a product does or should do. Features, when adequately managed, are the building blocks of customer value. Instead of thinking of features as a dirty word, we encourage our clients to embrace them strategically. By focusing on features that directly contribute to customer benefits and ROI, we ensure that every addition enhances the product’s overall value proposition.

4. Obligation

Negative Connotation: In the fast-moving world of software, 'obligation' sounds restrictive—an anchor that holds back agility and innovation. It can imply a burden or a forced commitment that stifles creativity, especially when you make too many of them.

Why We Love It: Your software-enabled solution is replete with obligations to your customers, regulatory agencies, and suppliers. We see obligations as opportunities to honor relationships and build trust with all stakeholders. Fulfilling obligations means many things, including educating your team on these obligations, implementing features, often following processes for development, and adjusting your solution as obligations change. Improvements to your brand and the esprit de corps of your team are among the many benefits you’ll accrue by meeting your obligations. We help our clients manage their obligations effectively, ensuring they become strengths rather than frustrations.

5. ROI (Return on Investment)

Negative Connotation: ROI is often viewed through a narrow lens—focused solely on financial returns at the expense of other vital factors like user experience or social impact. This can make ROI seem like a cold, numbers-driven metric that overlooks the bigger picture. And when the only way a company makes decisions is ROI, ROI quickly becomes ROLie.

Why We Love It: ROI is a holistic measure of success. ROI encompasses more than just financial returns; it also includes customer satisfaction, brand reputation, and long-term sustainability. And while all of these can be converted into ROI, sometimes the conversion isn’t needed or helpful. By integrating a sensible and pragmatic approach to analyzing initiatives that are motivated by ROI but not bound to ROI, we ensure that our clients achieve outcomes that are not only profitable but also aligned with their broader business goals.

Summary

These so-called 'dirty' words are more than just business jargon—they are essential elements of successful product management. Product managers can drive sustainable growth, innovation, and customer satisfaction by embracing concepts like Profit, Pricing, and ROI. These words aren't just for boardroom buzz; they are the building blocks of a thriving business. Now that you have a fresh perspective, it's time to take action.

Transform your approach to (profitable) product management and dive deeper into how these principles can revolutionize your business by exploring more of our resources at Applied Frameworks and Profit-Streams.com. Whether you are looking to refine your pricing strategy, optimize your feature set, better manage your obligations, or understand more about Solution Profitability Management, we’re here to help you build solutions that stand the test of time.

Want some more customized help? Schedule a meeting, and let’s discuss how you can turn these ‘dirty’ words into your biggest strengths.