AMA: Oracle Director of Product Management, Devika Nair on Managing Mature Products

In B2B, I typically build a structured customer feedback system with direct access to users. This includes regular 1:1 calls with top customers (often quarterly), semi-regular check-ins with mid-tier accounts, and group sessions to identify broader patterns across segments. I also supplement this with insights from conferences, customer events, and ad-hoc conversations to ensure I’m not missing emerging needs. This qualitative input is then triangulated with product usage data and behavioral met ...Read More

When joining an established team, I start by listening deeply and respecting existing context and opinions before making changes. I look for opportunities to contribute small, low-risk improvements early to build credibility and trust. Over time, I introduce structured frameworks and data-driven decision-making, using customer feedback and usage insights to ground discussions. This helps shift alignment from opinion-based to evidence-based, which naturally builds confidence in direction without ...Read More

One of the biggest challenges in creating a roadmap for a mature product is balancing investments that drive growth from existing customers with opportunities to acquire new customers and enter new markets. At the same time, you need to make room for foundational work such as technical debt reduction, platform modernization, reliability improvements, and scalability investments. The key is ensuring the roadmap delivers both short-term business impact and long-term strategic value, rather than op ...Read More

Hopefully, you identified the key success metrics before the launch. These could be your product’s core metrics or specific metrics the launch was intended to influence. Measure them closely and determine whether they are moving in the desired direction. Don't rely solely on quantitative data. Talk to customers and users to understand their experience. If the goal was to expand the product’s feature set, are they actually using the new capabilities? Do they meet user expectations and solve the i ...Read More

As products get more mature, the focus on revenue and efficiency outweighs more acquisition. Growth and retention of customers is important, but growing the existing customer base and the revenue per customer becomes significant. On top of this, efficiency and margins becomes a key consideration as well.I like to identify a few metrics related to these ideas, but identify trends on a weekly or monthly basis to refine and improve the product. Eg., who are your most significant customers, is there ...Read More

I usually structure prioritization by creating clear investment buckets that allocate time across different types of work, because mature products always have competing demands. These buckets vary by product, but typically include things like engineering and platform health, existing customer requests, strategic roadmap initiatives, and growth or expansion opportunities. This framework helps ensure we’re not over-indexing on any single input stream. Within and across buckets, I then prioritize b ...Read More