If you have worked in or with the software industry at all, you have lived through some dramatic delays in product development. For instance, Product Guernsey, originally announced last year, was due in January. It’s now the beginning of June, and it’s announced that the product, now called Providence, won’t be out until September. Or your last major release was supposed to take nine months. A year later, it won’t be out for another nine, so technically the team has worked for a year but it’s twelve months late.

In a business environment where companies are expected to run like clockwork, and planning and efficiency are prized, this doesn’t make your company look good. And people in all industries, including the software industry, are becoming less tolerant of this kind of slipshod scheduling.

If Product Management serves no other purpose, it serves to feed requests for new capabilities to Development and to structure the release of those capabilities. A Product Manager can be invaluable in helping your company be more successful at selecting, committing to, and meeting development (and consequently release) dates.

Read on below for guidance on how to commit to specific product release dates and meet them.