Strategic Product Management for Network Optimisation Services Across 2G, 3G, and 4G

1. Context

This initiative focused on productising network optimisation services by leveraging best practices from an experienced global service delivery centre. The objective was to formalise service descriptions, specifications, and delivery guidelines, ensuring consistency across all global service delivery teams.

Unlike traditional hardware or software product management, service productisation involves structuring best practices from real-world delivery projects into repeatable, scalable service offerings. In network optimisation, this means standardizing methods from various projects into a repeatable service. These service frameworks are then deployed globally to ensure standardised, high-quality service delivery across multiple regional service centres.

As the Strategic Product Manager, my role was to:

• Define and refine network optimisation services, ensuring that they are documented as structured offerings.
• Collaborate with a lead global service delivery centre to extract best practices while ensuring alignment with other regional service centres for cross-checking and validation.
• Standardise service delivery frameworks, enabling all service delivery centres globally to follow a unified methodology.
• Provide structured documentation to be used internally by service teams worldwide while supporting group product management in developing sales materials for commercial teams selling to mobile operators.

The key outcome of this initiative was to create highly accurate, best-practice-oriented service descriptions and delivery guidelines, ensuring that all regional service delivery teams followed a common approach when implementing network optimisation services. Additionally, feedback from ongoing projects would be used to continuously refine the service documentation, keeping it aligned with the latest industry advancements.

2. Challenge

• Rapid transition with minimal handover : The previous product manager had limited availability, requiring an immediate takeover of responsibilities.
• Extracting best practices from real-world projects : Since service productisation is built on lessons from actual deployments, service delivery centres needed to contribute their most effective methodologies.
• Ensuring global consistency : While the initial productisation was based on an experienced global service delivery centre, cross-checking with other regional centres was required to ensure wider applicability and scalability.
• Budget approval for documentation and SME support :
  • The primary budget requirement was to fund service development resources, including service delivery engineers, project managers, and technical documentation specialists, to document specifications, descriptions, and guidelines.
  • Additional budget was required for an SME resource to ensure that business requirements were successfully converted into service requirements, aligned with network architecture and operational feasibility.

3. Approach

• Immediate takeover and execution : With just one brief handover meeting and handover notes, I independently took charge from Day 1.
• Stakeholder alignment and international collaboration : I quickly established communication channels with the primary service delivery centre and additional regional centres to validate service frameworks and ensure alignment.
• Product requirements review and refinement : Conducted a full review of existing service documentation, identified gaps, and refined content to ensure it reflected global best practices.
• Technical and business consultations : Engaged with network optimisation experts and service teams to:
  • Define repeatable and scalable service descriptions.
  • Standardise delivery methodologies across all service teams.
  • Ensure that services were aligned with operator expectations while maintaining internal consistency.
• Product governance and budget approval : Led the approval process to secure funding for:
  • Service development resources, responsible for documenting service specifications, descriptions, and global delivery guidelines.
  • An additional SME resource, ensuring that business requirements were accurately translated into service requirements within network systems and operational frameworks.

4. Role & Achievements

• Led the definition and refinement of product requirements for network optimisation services, ensuring GSM, UMTS, and LTE best practices were formally documented.
• Collaborated with a lead global service delivery centre while integrating input from multiple regional centres to ensure global consistency.
• Reviewed and validated service specifications, ensuring that they were structured for repeatability across all service delivery centres worldwide.
• Ensured structured documentation was in place, making network optimisation services fully scalable and standardised across global projects.
• Secured budget approval for both service documentation resources and an SME resource, enabling deep technical validation and high-quality service development.

5. Results

• Successfully developed service descriptions and specifications, forming the foundation for a structured network optimisation service portfolio.
• Sales and marketing materials were developed using these specifications, allowing commercial teams to position and sell network optimisation services to mobile operators.
• Service delivery teams worldwide gained a structured framework, ensuring that best practices were applied consistently across all projects.
• Feedback from live projects was incorporated into continuous service refinements, keeping documentation aligned with evolving industry standards.
• Budget secured for service development resources and SME support, ensuring technical product validation and high-quality documentation.