How do you manage the stakeholders and teams that have worked on these products for years?

Stakeholders for mature products are typically large customers, experienced field teams (sales, engineering, support in B2B), and long-term product team members.

Managing customer expectation: While there are many aspects to managing customer expectations, here are a few things that I have encountered working on mature products:

1. Hundreds of users within a large customer organization use the product daily and expect it to scale and perform to their growing needs. As PMs, it's our job to ensure the users feel heard. As the PM lead for a mature product, I often talked to customers and had transparent roadmap discussions, so they were confident we would deliver what was essential for them.

2. Users don't like change unless a new feature or enhancement radically improves their life. Remember, a problem for one customer might not even be a nuisance to many others.

Managing team expectations: As a product leader, you serve the customer and the team building the product. While retaining customers is essential for business, product development teams can lose motivation to maintain a decade-old product, even one with a high ARR. I find that including senior/long-term team members in building the vision for the product is very helpful. They get a sense of belonging, have an ownership stake, and can even rally junior members for the cause. The other aspect of managing a team that has worked on a mature product is not giving in to some members' long-term biases. Even though they may have all the answers, I have found myself seeking clarity from others, which has helped me question the biases with a new perspective. Most people work with you when you question traditions or biases if you have the right intent, i.e., you are solving a real customer pain point. Even the most tenured team members come around when the stakes are high.