Software Product Management Enactment and Associated Competencies

This thesis examines the current state of conceptualising and enacting software product management (SPM) and the required competencies with empirical data from six interviews with practitioners operating in Finnish software organisations in B2B and B2C contexts. Interviewees span roles from senior product management, delivery lead, to people leadership. This research is important because the state of SPM is in transformation, and product managers are needed in a growing state. The competencies required to fulfil responsibilities are to be investigated to identify the expectations for product management roles, regardless of their official title. This research is part of a socio-technical field and was conducted as a qualitative interview study, thematically analysed through the gathered content iteratively. The study combines a background literature review and semi-structured interviews involving senior leaders from SaaS and B2B product firms in Finland. The research identified that the current conceptualisation of SPM in this sample is context-specific ownership work. The main research question of understanding that conceptualisation and enactment were supported by analysing identified titles and responsibilities. In the second main research question, competencies were investigated. The empirical findings contrast with the literature review by showing that, in the sample, competency models or SPM frameworks play a limited role in practice. Instead, the empirical findings emphasised the importance of communication, learning orientation, customer understanding, and risk tolerance as critical capabilities of early-stage product managers. The study contributes to software product management research by offering an empirically grounded conceptualisation of SPM as ownership-oriented work. The limitations of the study relate to its qualitative scope and context specificity, as focusing on senior-level experts may limit their generalisability.