In the world of product development, successes are celebrated with LinkedIn posts, conferences, and case studies. But behind every successful product, how many initiatives quietly fail? What they don’t tell you is that failures in product management are not uncommon. Worse still, they are often avoided in public discussions, as if they were an embarrassment to be hidden.
However, understanding the inner workings of poor product management gives you the means to avoid the same pitfalls. This article takes you behind the scenes of what few dare to admit: systemic errors, absurd decisions, and the often underestimated human consequences.
Sometimes it all starts imperceptibly. Objectives become unclear, change course without apparent logic. The product lacks direction: today the target is SMEs, tomorrow large enterprises, without any user research having been conducted. The backlog becomes an endless list of urgent features, dictated by sales or management. Meanwhile, teams get lost in conflicting priorities. This apparent chaos is often disguised with reassuring words like agility or rapid iteration, when it’s really just a matter of navigating by sight. And while everyone’s running, no one’s really looking where we’re going.
Behind the scenes, it’s often anarchy. The product manager is caught between management imposing its choices and a tech team frustrated at not being listened to. Meetings follow one another without clear decisions, deliverables are late, and end users are consulted very late—or never at all. Some products are even launched solely to avoid missing the latest trend, without any market analysis or real added value.
The result? Gimmicky features, shaky interfaces, and a team at the end of its tether. But on the surface, everything’s fine: we continue to boast about innovation and growth.
Poor product management doesn’t just cause financial losses. It exhausts teams. Talent leaves the company or loses all motivation. Quality plummets, customer support explodes, and user frustration increases. Through improvisation, the product becomes an incoherent patchwork, difficult to maintain, and even more difficult to sell. In some cases, the company’s entire credibility takes a hit. Yet, very few dare to sound the alarm, for fear of being perceived as negative or misaligned.
It is possible to turn things around, but it requires clarity and courage. The first step is to clarify the product vision: who are we addressing, why, and with what added value?
Next, we must establish a culture of constant feedback, both internally and with users. The product team cannot operate in a vacuum. We must also abandon the myth of the PM-as-hero and implement clear governance, with clearly defined responsibilities.
Finally, cultivating transparency, listening, and learning is essential to transform mistakes into a lever for improvement.
Failures are part of the process, but when they are hidden, they are repeated. Daring to talk about failures in product management gives the entire tech ecosystem a chance to evolve. It’s time to move away from overly positive storytelling and adopt a more honest, more human approach. Because behind every product, there are choices, tensions, and people. Recognizing what is wrong is already a way to start building better.