Product Management as a Service: The Metrics and Maturity Model to Drive Strategic Outcomes in ANZ

By Vijay Singh, Product Manager at Material

Too many product teams ship features based on assumptions. A recent McKinsey survey, in which 75% of business leaders say product management best practices aren’t being adopted in their organizations, confirms this pattern. The consequences of poor product management are clear: strategy gets sidelined, roadmaps turn reactive and true customer outcomes slip through the cracks. This happens when delivery is mistaken for progress and output is confused with success. Here, execution is measured, but real impact is ignored. Product Management as a Service (PMaaS) fills this gap. It brings strategic accountability and outcome-focused leadership into the product process.

PMaaS has emerged as a solution that offers flexibility where external experts drive product thinking by owning the “why,” aligning teams around outcomes and driving decisions that move the needle. Internal teams stay focused on building the product without losing sight of what matters. But for PMaaS to work, it must track the right business outcomes. Without them, PMaaS risks becoming just another vendor relationship without any accountability, strategic alignment or tangible business impact. The right metrics tie product priorities to outcomes, enable data-driven decisions and validate ROI. Teams that skip this step often drift into ambiguity, chasing deliverables instead of delivering real value.

Measuring What Matters: A Dual-Lens Approach to PMaaS Metrics

To evaluate PMaaS effectively, leaders need to track two distinct but interconnected dimensions across the entire product lifecycle.

• Strategic Metrics. Measure whether product work aligns with business goals and delivers customer value.

• Execution Metrics. Assess the efficiency, consistency and quality of delivery.

Only when viewed together do these lenses provide a complete picture of product health and PMaaS effectiveness.

Strategic Metrics – Measuring Impact and Outcomes

Teams often fall into the trap of celebrating output instead of outcome. Metrics like timely releases, feature velocity or low bug counts may feel like wins, but they don’t necessarily reflect value delivered to users or the business.

Before diving into what to measure strategically, challenge what looks like progress, but isn’t.

Common Strategic Blind Spots

• On-Time Delivery ≠ Product Market Fit (PMF). Shipping on schedule is good execution – but it doesn’t confirm that you’re solving the right problem.

• Feature Count ≠ Customer Satisfaction. A bloated roadmap isn’t a value strategy. More features often lead to user fatigue, not loyalty.

• Low Bug Count ≠ High Adoption. Clean code doesn’t guarantee product relevance. A bug-free product that no one uses is still a failure.

Instead, to measure strategic progress, start answering these fundamental questions.

• Are we building the right things?

• Is product strategy moving the business forward?

• Are users and customers seeing real value?

To answer these questions meaningfully, the table below maps key strategic metrics to the business priorities they’re meant to serve.

Execution Metrics – Measuring Process and Delivery

Used properly, execution metrics show if product teams are doing the right things well, or just keeping themselves busy.

Before choosing metrics, it’s important to understand where execution tracking often fails.

Common Blind Spots in Execution Tracking

• Velocity ≠ Value Delivered. High velocity looks impressive on a dashboard. But if those story points go into shipping low-impact features, you’re just moving fast in the wrong direction.

• Speed ≠ Outcomes. Optimizing for faster delivery often leads teams to cut corners or skip validation. Getting the wrong things out the door faster only digs a deeper hole.

• Sprint Success ≠ Business Progress. You can hit every sprint goal and still miss the mark. Process metrics don’t mean much if the product isn’t advancing real objectives.

• Green Dashboards ≠ Healthy Delivery. All the metrics look good, but the customer isn’t seeing value, the team is fatigued and quality is quietly slipping.

To make execution metrics work, ask these questions.

• How efficiently are we delivering value?

• Are we meeting our delivery commitments?

• Where are bottlenecks or inefficiencies in our workflows?

• How well are we managing quality and technical debt?

• Are the team and stakeholders satisfied with the process?

The table below maps key execution metrics to the operational priorities they support.

From Metrics to Maturity: The PMaaS Growth Curve

Tracking the right metrics is just the beginning. Use those insights to evaluate where your organization sits on the PMaaS maturity curve.

Our structured PMaaS maturity model below shows a staged view of how organizations can evolve from reactive execution to embedded, strategic product leadership.

Next Step: Audit What Matters

Use Material’s PMaaS Maturity Model to identify your current growth phase. But don’t stop there.

To understand what’s holding you back, audit your strategic and execution metrics to uncover misalignment, execution gaps and missed opportunities. By regularly monitoring the appropriate metrics, you can progress through the readiness phases and transform your PMaaS maturity from simply “getting things done” to delivering transformational value throughout the organization.

Want help? Material’s product experts can benchmark your current state and show you how to shift from activity to measurable impact. Reach out today for an initial consultation.