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Software Product Management & Development

We help clients build best-in-class software product and development organizations to accelerate growth.

Software executives are grappling with a rapidly changing landscape that is transforming how software gets written. Furthermore, software leaders face myriad choices to invest in new platforms, technologies, delivery models, and team configurations that are often difficult to link to performance and profits.
Effectively harnessing product management and software development talent has the potential to drive performance more than any other function. Increasingly digital leaders outside software – in hardware, semiconductors, automotive, aerospace, defense, industrials, and medical devices – grapple with these same challenges. At McKinsey, we help our clients take a holistic view of how they build, adapt, and optimize their product teams and portfolios.

Product Management

We help companies build or advance their product management functions, using maturity assessment tools and proprietary learning offerings.

Portfolio

Scanning the market for attractiveness and clarifying your strategic positioning can help identify the right areas to prioritize and set the right investment level—both at the macro (product) and micro (initiatives/feature) levels.

Efficiency

Our proprietary methodology, combined with Numetrics’ advanced analytics and predictive tools, can help optimize development productivity and accelerate time to market. We take two lenses to optimize efficiency: 1) people and structure and 2) product complexity and life cycle.

Effectiveness

We help evaluate software development practices along 15 dimensions to uncover areas of improvement.

Featured Insights

Collection

Enterprise software: An industry in transformation

Software leaders contend with a growing array of challenges, and new commercial models, artificial intelligence, and digital technologies are raising the competitive bar. This suite of articles offers our latest thinking to navigate changes and to capitalize on the opportunities they present.
Article

The product management talent dilemma
– Despite product managers’ central roles in software organizations, they are often neglected from a talent-management perspective. Four levers can address this industry-wide challenge.
Article

How predictive analytics can boost product development
– Complex product-development projects are plagued by schedule slips and cost overruns. The up-front application of advanced and predictive analytics helps companies build plans they can stick to.
Article

Product managers for the digital world
– The role of the product manager is expanding due to the growing importance of data in decision making, an increased customer and design focus, and the evolution of software-development methodologies.

Featured Experts

Ondrej Burkacky
Senior Partner, Munich
Uses his expertise in semiconductors, R&D, and embedded software to advise clients on operational improvement, R&D, and software-related topics
Chandra Gnanasambandam
Senior Partner, Bay Area
Helps high-tech companies transform performance by setting business, product, and go-to-market strategies that create sustainable value
Martin Harrysson
Partner, Bay Area
Draws on expertise in software product development and digital strategy to help clients innovate the customer experience, evolve their operating model, and develop new products
Rahul Mangla
Partner, Bay Area
Brings deep knowledge of software-related product development and services strategy to help technology companies deliver sustainable improvements in business performance
André Rocha
Partner, Tokyo
Serves global companies across a wide range of industries—such as advanced electronics, high tech, medical devices, automotive, and machinery—with a strong focus on hardware and software product development excellence, operations, and digitization

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