Product Management as a role has moved on in leaps and bounds during my career. As the number of people gathered at Mind the Product London 2016 prove - it’s a skill and a job that more and more companies understand, appreciate, and seek out.

And the job itself has evolved - from traffic managing releases, through a dark period of just writing agile stories, to a more enlightened and collaborative role that brings together the best of user experience, business, and technology.

So problem solved right? We’ve got our job title, we’ve got our space in the organisation, and we’ve got our seat at the management team table? Let’s just get on with building awesome products?

Not so fast. Product management simply doesn’t lend itself to the status quo.

In this introduction to the conference I outlined the many challenges facing us, and what we need to do to meet them head on.