Gap coverage for established product management roles is a must-have. It’s just that simple. It’s shocking how often companies white-knuckle it through product management hiring vacancies for 2 to 4 + months, or through parental leaves for ~4 to 6 months, with no support for these critical cross-functional roles. A gaping hole previously filled by a full-time, very busy product person.
The thing is, there are plenty of excellent short-term coverage options available these days, and they add a ton of value. Coverage for these roles is a must-have if you have gaps longer than a sprint or two. It’s just too important of a role to leave open if it was previously filled, busy, and competently done.
Let’s break it down further.
The parent on leave, the cross-functional team continuing the work, the business, the product… all of these critical elements are consistently supported and roadmap work continues uninterrupted. Chaos doesn’t break out, stakeholders remain informed, sprints run pretty normally (it’s product, let’s bake in room for something!), and things are good. Your full-time employee returns to seamless knowledge transfer and a well-functioning team.
You might be able to get by without support, but the gaps will create long-term issues that are far more costly than investing in fractional coverage, trust me.
"Oh, they’re only out for 4 months, we’ll manage with the help of the rest of the team." - A well-intentioned leader who’s about to learn the hard way :(
Burnout, turnover, knowledge gaps, and quality issues are just a few of the costly problems that come to mind when companies try to get by without filling a temporary product gap. Everyone else already has a full-time job, and more in many cases. It isn't reasonable to think that a product manager’s job can be split up in an organized way, easily spread across multiple people with existing jobs, and done with high quality.
Because of this, a lot falls through the cracks during the gaps, and there is often a lot to clean up when someone comes back from leave or takes a long-vacant role. Plus there’s the opportunity cost of the roadmap work that didn’t happen, and that won’t happen while they spend time cleaning up the mess. This is why gaps in established product roles are so impactful and expensive.
Fresh eyes and ears will drive new ideas, prompt provocative questions, and bring new perspectives to your products. This spurs innovation and adds value to your roadmap. Whether it’s small but impactful tweaks that raise conversion rates, or better copy that reduces churn in a key flow, an objective set of eyes on your product is a good thing and yet another reason to get coverage during any gap or vacancy.
Process, tooling, org structure, accountability, culture, you name it. Those fresh eyes/ears also bring holistic and valuable product experience, so they naturally see low-hanging fruit (and long-term opportunities) across your product development processes and teams. Everyone benefits from improved efficiency and better operations.
So, even if you can only afford to invest in fractional coverage, it’s well worth it. Your teams will thank you and your product and business will benefit.
Want to learn more about working with product management consultants? Check out our guide here.