Technology that has moved away from customer sampling based techniques to data mining techniques by increasing the vastness and preciseness of customer data captured, has changed the very flavor of the product market. Throwing light on the role of technology in product management Stratify's Ramana Venkata, in an interaction with CIOL's B.V.Shiva Shankar, said technology trends like Web 2.0 enable self-adaptable marketing techniques by enhanced feedback mechanisms and focused interactions. H e said, this works both ways as in disbursing product marketing info too.

CIOL: Tell us about the latest trends and advancements in product management?
Ramana Venkata: Product Management has evolved from feature and performance management to encompass marketing and customer service as well. Today an enterprise software product management involves software implementation as well. The gap between a software product and providing it as a service has blurred considerably. Prioritization of feature requests by users, enhanced collaboration between different products (system integration, SOA), increased product applicability (installable product or software as service, phased implementation cycles, modular products) are some of the trends in product management.

CIOL: Apparently there is a lot of scope for engineering services in product management, is it a point of convergence of engineering services and IT services?
RV: Product management is bigger in scope than engineering services and IT services. Product Management also encompasses design, sales, logistics etc. Product Management involves balancing engineering services and IT services for better customer satisfaction and increased reusability.

CIOL: Turning marketing information into product requirements is the key to the successful business. What are the technological requirements to achieve this?
RV: More than technology it's the approach to building product requirements that is important. There are tools like UML, gap analysis etc. to depict use-cases, functional requirements. There is enterprise software available to help prioritize product features/bugs and customer preferences by managing marketing information. But a process that enforces clarity, checks, management of costs/schedule and proper communication is more effective for successful requirements gathering.