Product Portfolio Management: A Practical Guide for Product Leaders

Product portfolio management is one of the most complex tasks product leaders have on their table. Is not just about moving teams around, is about making sure you are creating the focus in the most strategic areas you have that will enable you to reach your goals.

Most companies will hit some of these problems sooner or later:

• Too many initiatives
• Not enough people to drive them
• Competing and contradicting priorities

So, whether you are a director, a VP, or a chief product officer, understanding and having hands-on experience managing portfolios is going to be critical for the success of the business.

What Is Product Portfolio Management

At its core, product portfolio management is about helping the company achieve its strategic goals through the products that it builds and maintains.

So it is not about the outputs, i.e., assigning resources to products, but about creating strategies and plans to support them, and shape the business towards the future you want to create.

This might sound easy, but in reality is quite a complex process.

Different Ways to Structure a Product Portfolio

One of the most overlooked aspects of portfolio management is understanding how your products stack up against customer workflows and needs.

There are multiple valid ways to structure a portfolio. But I'm going to talk about two that I find most intuitive.

1. Workflow-Based Portfolio

In a workflow-based portfolio, products align with different stages of a customer journey.

A simplified journey for product development could be: Discovery -> Planning -> Prioritization -> Implementation -> Testing -> Delivery

A company like Atlassian has had this approach, where each product focuses on solving problems in a specific stage. Together, they form a coherent ecosystem. In these cases, integration is very important to help customers exchange data easily.

This approach:

• Serves multiple personas

• Covers a wide range of customer needs

• Requires strong coordination between products

The challenge is avoiding overlap, fragmentation, and unclear ownership.

2. Tier-Based or Capability-Based Portfolios

In a tier-based portfolio, products build on top of each other to serve a narrower but deeper problem space.

For example, in testing, many companies cover different aspects, and sometimes build the portfolio or product tiers in a similar fashion to this one: UI testing -> Static code analysis ->Code coverage

Each product addresses a specific capability, often for closely related personas.

This approach:

• Serves fewer personas

• Allows deep specialization

• Makes ownership clearer

The risk here is over-optimizing for a niche and missing broader market opportunities.

Why Team Allocation Matters More Than You Think

One of the most common mistakes in portfolio management is shuffling teams between products. This is a very common practice, but shifting focus or expertise often is not as easy, or straightforward, as some leaders might think.

On paper, it looks efficient: move teams where priorities are, teams are “flexible”, you might even call it Agile!

In reality, it creates serious problems: 

• Loss of product ownership: the teams don't feel attached or accountable for the products.

• Shallow domain expertise: constant shift in focus will lead to having plenty of generalists but fewer experts.

• Teams that feel responsible for tasks, not outcomes

When teams are shared across multiple products, success becomes abstract. People belong to functions, not to products. This is why companies work in silos, e.g, marketing teams feel like they work in marketing, but don't feel like they are responsible for the success of the product.

Dedicated Teams Create Real Ownership

When teams are dedicated to a product:

• Their success is tied to the product’s success

• They build long-term expertise

• They care about outcomes, not just delivery

This goes beyond the concept of product trios. These should be true multi-disciplinary teams, real cross-functional teams, from engineering, product and desing, to marketing, sales and services. True product ownership happens when cross-functional teams are accountable for end-to-end results.

Portfolio Management and Resource Allocation

I earlier said that product portfolio management is not just resource allocation, but of course, it will play a key role in the success of your portfolio.

Every strategy eventually becomes a resource allocation decision.

When managing a portfolio, you are constantly balancing: growth investments, maintenance of existing products and strategic bets.

You need to map your strategic goals, with how you are planning development and growth on different products, and ensure that you are supporting your cash cows, but also opening the doors to new potential growth with your strategic bets. And always minimized the efforts that go to non-producing efforts, like one-offs that often happen in established companies.

Careful with how you manage your cash cows, I've seen companies so focused on creating new opportunities that they ignore those customers that created their success. This can happen in many ways:

• Companies that have one product, which every time gets new capabilities to support new markets or industries.
• Developments go only to the new industries and markets, but the core customers see no changes in the product
• Core customers feel frustrated because the product has nothing for them for years, and they have tons of requests for improvements.

This can spiral badly, leading to your core customers looking for alternatives.

Balanced Portfolios Win Long-Term

There is no single “correct” portfolio strategy.

• Early-stage companies often prioritize growth

• Mature companies may focus on ROI

• Most successful organizations aim for balance

The key is intentionality. Portfolio management should be: explicit, revisited regularly, and anchored in strategy, not reactiveness.

Why Portfolio Management Is a Core Leadership Skill

Product portfolio management isn’t about frameworks or diagrams.

It’s about:

• Making trade-offs visible

• Creating clarity for teams

• Aligning execution with strategy

For product leaders, this is non-negotiable.

If you want teams to feel ownership, customers to feel value, and strategy to actually matter, portfolio management must be treated as a continuous leadership responsibility, not a quarterly exercise.

Check out the free product leader framework to help you with your work.