ModuleWorks is a global market leader in CAD/CAM software components that reached a pivotal moment in its growth journey.

The company holds a dominant 90% market share in providing toolpath and simulation technologies to CAD/CAM software vendors, plus the largest dedicated development and product management team worldwide in this space. This market leadership has driven impressive growth of 20% annually for over two decades.

As Product Director Miguel Johann recognized, the product management approach that had fuelled their early success needed to evolve. To support their ambitious expansion plans, the team needed a more robust structure and consistent professional practices. This realization led ModuleWorks to partner with Product Focus, ensuring their continued leadership through a more scalable and strategic product management approach.

 

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The challenge

Before partnering with Product Focus, ModuleWorks was experiencing the natural challenges that accompany organizational growth:

• Establishing consistent approaches: As the product team expanded, they recognized the need for structured methodologies and processes to ensure consistency and maintain effectiveness across all product managers.
• Clarifying roles and accountability: As the organization grew, they identified opportunities to enhance clarity around product ownership and create more defined responsibilities across the expanding team.
• Harmonizing diverse expertise: Team members brought valuable experience from various functional backgrounds, creating the opportunity to align these different approaches into cohesive, unified practices.
• Institutionalizing founder expertise: The founder’s exceptional product intuition had driven significant success, and the organization recognized the importance of capturing and transferring this knowledge into repeatable processes that could scale beyond individual expertise.

“The company had succeeded with early product management approaches,” Miguel explained. “As we expanded, we recognized the opportunity to implement more structured approaches that would enhance our effectiveness and ensure consistent practices across our growing team.”

 

The solution

Rather than attempting to develop training internally, Miguel made the strategic decision to partner with Product Focus for comprehensive product management education. The choice was driven by some key factors:

• Professional expertise: Miguel recognized that while he could provide coaching, external training would deliver a consistent baseline of skills, best practices, and methodologies greater than internal development alone.
• Comprehensive proven approaches: The training provided structured approaches that team members could reference long after the initial sessions, creating a sustainable foundation for practice and application in the workplace.
• Unified language: Establishing common terminology and unified methods across the entire product division to eliminate confusion and improve collaboration.

“We were looking for consistency, proven methods, and developing core competencies,” Miguel noted. “The resources that Product Focus provides are invaluable because product managers can refer back to the materials as they apply their new skills in the workplace.”

 

The impact

The transformation of the team has been substantial, creating both immediate improvements and the basis for lasting organizational impact:

• Operational consistency: The most tangible change has been the establishment of consistent practices across the product division. Team members now operate from shared frameworks and best practices, rather than individual interpretations.
• Enhanced accountability: Clear ownership structures have emerged, with product management responsibilities effectively distributed and understood throughout the organization.
• Improved organizational trust: The structured approach has created greater confidence across the company in product management decisions and processes.
• Leadership development: The training influenced Miguel’s own approach, making him more disciplined in his leadership style while raising team expectations for professional standards.
• Team empowerment: Product managers gained confidence and motivation, feeling better equipped to handle their responsibilities with professional tools and methods.

Miguel reflected on an unexpected insight from the training:

“One of our product managers mentioned during training that while every PM has their own products, I, as a Product Director, had the entire team as ‘my product.’ This insight led us to apply those learnings to help grow and develop our product managers.”

 

Looking forward

ModuleWorks continues to build on their foundation of structured product management practices, equipping them for decades of future growth.

The professional frameworks established through the training have positioned the company to scale effectively while maintaining the innovation and agility that defined their early success.

 

Key takeaways

For organizations considering similar product management training initiatives, Miguel offers this guidance:

• Commit fully to the process to drive impact: “Don’t engage in the training unless you’re prepared for the investment of time before, during, and after.” Transformation requires dedication beyond the training sessions themselves – training needs customization for relevance, and newly-acquired skills need to be practiced and embedded in the workplace.
• Expect greater impact than anticipated: The benefits extended beyond what Miguel initially expected, empowering the team with tools, confidence, and capabilities that transformed their day-to-day ways of working.
• Embrace the cultural shift: Moving from successful founder-led product management to structured, scalable consistent practices requires organizational commitment at all levels.

Through this focused investment in product management capabilities, ModuleWorks has successfully evolved their practices to deliver consistent high-performance product management. As Miguel puts it: