Most Product Managers think their job is to ship code. They are wrong.
Your job is to manage a profit and loss statement.
Early in my career, I made the mistake of presenting a “feature completion” chart to my board. They looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. They didn’t care that we shipped the new dashboard. They cared that churn was up 2% and CAC hadn’t moved.
That meeting was a failure. So I changed the structure.
I stopped tracking “velocity” and started tracking “financial impact.”
Here is the shift:
Old Way: “We launched the reporting module.” (Who cares?)
New Way: “The reporting module reduced support costs by $15k/month and protected $2M in ARR from at-risk accounts.”
When I scaled a SaaS product to $25M ARR, I didn’t do it by clearing Jira tickets. I did it by treating every feature request as a capital investment that required a return.
If you cannot connect your backlog to the bank account, you aren’t a Product Manager. You are a project administrator.
One Question For You: Do you know the exact dollar value of the churn your current sprint is supposed to prevent?
Richard Ewing is a Product Executive and the creator of The Product Economist framework. He serves as a Strategic Advisor to B2B SaaS organizations, helping leaders audit their roadmaps for capital efficiency and prevent “model collapse” in their business models.
Stop guessing. Start auditing.
Connect on LinkedIn: Richard Ewing (MBA)
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