Discovery · Decisions · Commercialization
Product consulting:
the work between an idea and a customer.
How I connect customer needs, product decisions and business performance, with practical frameworks, different strategies and a team that can keep moving after I leave.
I have plenty of ideas. That is only the beginning.
One of mine was my third-grade science project, which looked an awful lot like a product the DOT released four years later. They were also one of the sponsors.
I’m sure I’ll let that go eventually.
But companies don’t hire me to hear about my unresolved elementary school intellectual property dispute. They hire me to bridge the gap between an idea, the business behind it, and the customer who needs a reason to care.
On an engagement I recently finished, my title was Principal Product Consultant. The work involved a technically complex biomimicry product designed to help skydivers. The details are covered by an NDA, so that is the extent of what I can share about the product.
I can explain the broader product consulting work: how I approach discovery, help people make difficult choices, connect those choices to commercial performance, and build ways of working that outlast an engagement. The methods below describe that wider practice.
The people funding a product, the people building it, and the people expected to buy it can all be enthusiastic about the same idea while picturing three entirely different things. Getting those perspectives into the same conversation is a substantial part of the job.
Find the decision hiding inside the request.
“We need a product strategy” can mean the company has an early concept, a disappointing launch, a confusing assortment of offers, or several teams pursuing incompatible priorities. Those situations need different work.
I want to understand what leadership is trying to accomplish, what customers are doing now, and which constraint is preventing progress. That means looking at research, customer conversations, product behavior, sales feedback, delivery capacity and economics together. Each source can reveal something the others miss.
We then define the decision: enter a market, choose a first customer group, test a concept, change an offer, improve adoption, invest further, or stop. A named decision gives discovery a purpose and makes it easier to identify whose input matters.
My innovation consulting work addresses the early investment question in more detail. Product consulting can continue through execution, commercial performance and the leadership practices needed to sustain the product.
Tools for better judgment
Product consulting frameworks,
chosen for the question.
A framework earns its place when it helps the team see something, compare options or make a decision. These are useful approaches for different parts of the work. They do not all belong in every engagement, and filling in the boxes does not establish that the answers are true.
Jobs to Be Done
When the customer’s reason for changing is unclear.
Explore the progress someone is trying to make in a particular situation, including the practical, emotional and social pressures around the choice. The current alternative might be a competitor, a spreadsheet, a workaround or doing nothing.
Useful output: a specific account of the customer’s circumstances, desired progress and obstacles to adoption. Interviews need real experiences to examine; a list of hypothetical preferences is a weaker foundation.
Opportunity solution trees
When a team is jumping from a goal to its favorite feature.
Connect a desired outcome to customer opportunities, possible solutions and the assumptions behind those solutions. Teresa Torres’s framework makes the reasoning visible so a team can compare several approaches to the same opportunity.
Useful output: a shared view of the options and what needs testing next. Its value depends on opportunities grounded in discovery, rather than a tree decorated with the team’s existing backlog.
Assumption mapping & experiment design
When an attractive plan depends on things nobody has established.
List what must be true about demand, usability, delivery and commercial viability. Compare the importance of each assumption with the evidence supporting it. Test consequential uncertainties before committing heavily to the choices they support.
Useful output: an experiment brief with a hypothesis, method, relevant participants, decision threshold and owner. Agree on how the result will affect the decision before seeing it.
Value Proposition Canvas & Business Model Canvas
When the customer benefit and the business model do not connect.
Strategyzer’s Value Proposition Canvas relates customer jobs, pains and gains to the proposed offer. The Business Model Canvas widens the discussion to customers, channels, relationships, resources, activities, partners, revenues and costs.
Useful output: explicit hypotheses about how value is created, delivered and paid for. A coherent canvas is a starting point for investigation. It is not proof of demand or profitable delivery.
RICE & impact-versus-effort prioritization
When several plausible investments compete for limited capacity.
Intercom’s RICE method considers reach, impact, confidence and effort. A simpler impact-versus-effort comparison can also help when the available evidence does not support a more detailed model.
Useful output: a reasoned comparison with assumptions visible. Dependencies and necessary obligations still need separate consideration. A high score built from guesses does not become reliable because it has a decimal point.
Outcome mapping & metric trees
When activity is easy to count but progress is hard to explain.
Connect a business objective to the customer behavior or operating change expected to influence it. Define the measures, baseline, review period and safeguards that prevent improvement in one area from hiding deterioration elsewhere.
Useful output: a measurement plan that explains the proposed relationships. A plausible connection between two metrics still needs checking; a chart alone does not establish cause and effect.
Now, next & later roadmaps
When distant plans are being presented with more certainty than the evidence supports.
Separate current commitments from the opportunities that need further discovery. State the intended outcome and the conditions that would move an item forward. Fixed obligations can retain real dates while uncertain work is represented honestly.
Useful output: a roadmap that connects priorities to learning, capacity and dependencies. It should be clear what the team has committed to deliver and what it is still considering.
Decision logs & clear decision rights
When the same disagreement returns in every meeting.
Record the decision, its owner, the evidence considered, the tradeoffs accepted and the conditions for revisiting it. Identify who contributes expertise, who decides and who needs to know the outcome.
Useful output: a record the next team member can understand without reconstructing six months of conversations. Clear ownership helps people act while keeping disagreement and uncertainty visible.
Different starting points
The strategy changes with the problem.
A framework organizes thinking. Strategy determines where the company will concentrate its effort and what it will pass over. Here are several directions a product consulting engagement can take.
Validate a new product.
Identify a specific customer, establish the importance of the problem, and test the assumptions most likely to change the investment decision. The first useful commitment may be a focused discovery effort or prototype rather than a full build.
Choose a first market.
Compare potential segments by urgency, access, buying process, delivery requirements and commercial potential. Concentrate on a group the company can serve credibly, then define what evidence would justify expanding beyond it.
Improve an existing product.
Examine where customers struggle to begin, reach a useful result or continue using the offer. Determine whether the constraint sits in the product, onboarding, support, expectations or the customer segment being pursued.
Rework pricing or packaging.
Investigate which benefits matter to different buyers, how they prefer to purchase, and what each offer costs to deliver. Test an understandable commercial structure without treating discounts as the answer to every objection.
Restore direction to a struggling team.
Clarify the outcome, resolve conflicting priorities, identify blocked decisions and reduce commitments where capacity cannot support them. Improve the operating conditions around the team while addressing the product choices themselves.
Allocate investment across a portfolio.
Compare opportunities across products, including dependencies and the cost of spreading people too thinly. Make explicit choices about where to invest, maintain, investigate or withdraw effort, with review points for changing conditions.
How I work with a company.
The scope can be narrow or substantial. I may advise leadership on a particular decision, own product outcomes alongside a team, or take an interim product leadership role. We establish the remit and decision authority so everyone understands what I am responsible for.
Understand the situation.
I start with the business objective, the customer context, the work already underway and the constraints. Existing research deserves a careful reading. People who sell, deliver and support the product often have evidence that never reached the strategy presentation.
Make the disagreement specific.
A group can appear aligned because everyone likes the word “growth.” We need to establish whose growth, from which customers, through what behavior and at what cost. I bring the competing assumptions into view so the team can examine the real choice.
Develop options and a way to judge them.
We compare possible approaches, identify the tradeoffs and decide what evidence is still needed. Research and experiments have a defined purpose. The team should understand how the learning could alter the recommendation.
Connect the decision to execution.
We translate the chosen direction into priorities, responsibilities, dependencies and review points. I stay close enough to the work to see when an assumption fails or a constraint changes, then help the right people respond.
Review outcomes and adjust.
We compare the result with the baseline and the intended outcome. Delivery, adoption, commercial performance and customer experience each tell part of the story. The review should lead to a decision about what happens next.
This requires direct communication. An executive needs a clear account of the investment, risk and options. A product manager needs enough context to make the next choice. A technical partner needs space to explain constraints without having them translated into an inconvenient footnote.
Commercialization starts while the choices can still change.
A product can be useful and still be difficult to buy, expensive to support, or aimed at someone who cannot authorize the purchase. Those are product strategy concerns as well as marketing and sales concerns.
I work with those teams on positioning, differentiation, pricing, packaging and the route to market. We need to understand the user, the buyer and other people who can approve or block adoption. In some businesses those are the same person. In others, the sale depends on several people finding different kinds of value.
Pricing work includes the basis for the charge, the way an offer is divided, and the service obligations created by the sale. A subscription, a one-time purchase and a usage-based offer each create different expectations. The appropriate choice depends on the customer, the product and the economics.
Evidence can come from purchase history, win-loss conversations, observed objections, structured offer tests and carefully scoped commercial pilots. I want to distinguish interest from commitment and a revenue increase from an improvement that remains worthwhile after delivery and support costs.
The company also needs to be ready to keep the promise: explain the product, help customers start, handle exceptions and learn from what happens after the sale. Those responsibilities need owners before the launch creates demand for them.
AI changes the product questions and the working methods.
Across my product consulting work, AI can be relevant in two places: within an offer and within the research, prioritization and experimentation behind it.
For an AI product or feature, I want to establish the task it should improve, the evidence needed to judge performance, the cost of handling unsuccessful results and the person responsible for review or intervention. Evaluation needs representative cases, including difficult ones. The required standard depends on the use and the consequences of an error.
The economics also need attention. Usage costs, review effort, support and changing delivery patterns can affect pricing and packaging. More usage may create more customer value while also creating more cost. The offer has to account for both.
In my own practice, AI supports reusable workflows for organizing research, comparing options, preparing experiments and examining assumptions. I keep the original evidence available and distinguish what a source established from what a model inferred. Generated customer opinions cannot substitute for speaking with customers.
These workflows should leave a team able to inspect the reasoning, check the output and revise the approach. For the broader organizational work, see my AI consulting and integration services.
Leave behind a team that can keep doing the work.
Mentoring is part of the engagement. I work alongside product managers and cross-functional partners, give direct feedback, explain the reasoning behind decisions, and help people practice the work themselves.
Where the assignment includes interim leadership, that can extend to product management practices, hiring criteria, role expectations and the way teams review performance. The aim is to make good decisions repeatable without requiring every question to pass through one person.
The useful handover depends on the assignment. It can include:
- A clear product direction with customer, business and investment priorities.
- An evidence record that distinguishes findings, assumptions and unanswered questions.
- A prioritized set of opportunities with the reasoning and tradeoffs preserved.
- An experiment plan and a roadmap with named owners and decision points.
- Pricing, packaging and positioning recommendations tied to their supporting evidence.
- Defined measures, review routines and responsibilities for acting on results.
- Working practices the team has used with me, so the handover is more than a document.
That is the standard I care about: the organization should understand its product decisions and have the means to improve them after the engagement ends.
Before we talk
A few practical questions.
When is a product consultant useful?
When a company needs experienced help with a consequential product decision, lacks capacity for discovery or leadership, or has become stuck across customer needs, delivery and commercial priorities. The assignment should name the decision or outcome it is intended to support.
How does product consulting relate to product management and project management?
Product management provides ongoing ownership of product direction and outcomes. Project management coordinates agreed work, dependencies and delivery. A product consulting engagement can support those functions, develop their practices or temporarily take on defined product leadership responsibilities. The scope and authority need to be explicit.
Do we need a finished product before working together?
No. The work can begin with an early idea, an investment decision or a product already in the market. What matters is having a real question to address and access to the people and evidence needed to investigate it.
Can you work with a technically complex product?
Yes. I work with technical specialists to connect customer needs, product choices, commercial decisions and understandable communication. Scientific and engineering judgments remain with the appropriate experts. My biomimicry advisory page explains that communication work in a specific field.
What should we bring to the first conversation?
Bring the situation, the decision you need to make, what you have already tried and the constraints you know about. Existing research, customer feedback and a candid account of where the team disagrees are useful. You do not need to arrive with a fully written consulting brief.
Framework sources
The named methods above come from established product and business strategy work. These original sources explain them in more detail.