As our businesses have become more complex, particularly with more distribution channels and formats, our technology has had to change significantly.

In recent conversations with industry leaders, I have heard frustration around aligning product and technology. If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone! In this post I’m addressing the tech stack rather than the organisational considerations to an effective partnership; the latter we’ll talk about in an upcoming Webinar). 

A tech stack is a puzzle with a number of pieces. While there are likely to be major pieces of technology, no news organisation works solely within one system. Therefore each PM needs to have an understanding of the tech stack for the area they are working on, the possibilities and the limitations, to do their job effectively. 

Sometimes a piece of technology isn’t giving what we need, but we must also understand the impact any changes made will have on the rest of the business. Any change may also have a knock-on impact on what can be delivered within a given timeframe. When you recruit, this may take a little time and relies heavily on the relationship the PM has with their technology counterparts.

A sometimes-overlooked fact, which gets projects in trouble, is that technology underpins our workflows. I’m not talking about basic office tasks but how copy is filed, edited, and published, how and where visuals are created and stored, how adverts are uploaded and placed, how we run experiments and tests, how we analyse and measure. 

Our need to understand technology is also about how it affects everyone else. A good PM will understand how each stakeholder uses the technology stack, and a great PM will understand their frustrations and opportunities for improvements.  

I am seeing more and more organisations breaking down the core system into speciality areas. It may be a highly focused video-based software or a subscription tool or a single login. There are many reasons an organisation may start looking at new pieces to add to or replace a part of the core stack.

And when this happens, there is the age-old question of build vs. buy — the debate of whether to invest in building your own technology or buying it from a vendor. Technology built in-house gives you greater control and comes with the cost of doing so. 

The devil is often in the details. And it’s not just about creating and maintaining the technology itself. It’s about the integrations to everything else you are doing and the speed implications.

Outsourcing gives you advantages of learnings from their multiple customers and is likely to be developed faster by specialists. However you don’t control the road map so you are at the whim of the creator.

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