Product Management
Product Management is the record of what your organization builds and what has shipped. Where PPM tracks the funded effort to change something and Work Management tracks the items being worked, Product Management holds the durable catalog those efforts act on — the product lines, applications and services that exist whether or not a project is currently touching them — and the versions, releases and deployments that carry changes into an environment.
Product Management is gated by the Product Management feature flag, which is disabled when first deployed. An administrator enables it under Settings → System → Feature Flags. While it is off the area is not reachable at all.
Two Different Hierarchies
The most common point of confusion is that a product sits in two structures at once, and they answer different questions.
The product tree is composition: a Product Line contains Products, which contain Services and Applications. This is what the catalog shows, and it is the hierarchy you move a product within.
The delivery relationship: a version is cut against one releasable node, several component versions may ship together inside a package, and a release announces whatever carried it to customers.
A node's type decides whether versions can be cut against it — a Product Line is usually an organizing container, while a Service is a thing that ships. A release, being an announcement rather than an artifact, may sit under any node.
A deployment carries either a version or a package, never both — see how the five fit together.
How Product Management Connects Across Wayd
- Strategic Themes and products both answer "why are we building this?" from different ends — themes give the intent, the catalog gives the thing.
- Projects are the funded effort to change a product. A project is temporary; the product outlives it.
- Tags carry the classifications that do not change behaviour — platform, tech stack, compliance scope — so the type system can stay small.
- External links point a product at the repository, pipeline or registry package that owns it, so a later automated feed can be matched against hand-curated products rather than re-authored.
What Is Available Today
Every area of Product Management has both a screen and an API, except product types, which are managed through the API alone.
| Area | Interface | API |
|---|---|---|
| Products and tags | Yes | Yes |
| Product types | No — seeded, and managed through the API | Yes |
| Product dependencies | Yes | Yes |
| Releases and versions | Yes | Yes |
| Release packages | Yes | Yes |
| Deployments and environments | Yes | Yes |
| Delivery overview and version activity | Yes | Yes |
| Rollout — what is running where | Yes | Yes |
| Delivery metrics | Yes | Yes |
Two pages read the records rather than adding to them. Delivery measures what was cut and shipped from the version record, which needs no deployments at all. Rollout derives what is running in each environment from the deployment record, so it can never drift out of step with it.
Delivery metrics reports the two DORA measures this module can compute from what it records. The other two are shown as unavailable, each with the reason, rather than approximated — see Delivery Metrics.
Sections
- Products — The catalog: creating products, the tree, types, statuses, tags, moving, external links, and the dependencies between products
- Delivery — Releases, versions, packages, deployments, environments, the rollout and version-activity views, and the delivery metrics computed from them
- Bulk Import — Loading the catalog, dependencies and delivery records from CSV
Permissions
Every action in this area is granted by permission claim alone; unlike PPM, there is no membership or leadership requirement on a record. Permissions are assigned to roles under Settings → Access → Roles.
| Permission | Grants |
|---|---|
Permissions.Products.View | See the catalog and product details |
Permissions.Products.Create | Add products |
Permissions.Products.Update | Edit, retype, move, tag, change status, link externally, record dependencies |
Permissions.Products.Delete | Remove products |
Permissions.Products.Import | Bulk import products and their dependencies from CSV |
Permissions.ProductTypes.* | Manage the type list |
Permissions.ProductTagCategories.* | Manage the tag axes and the tags on them |
Permissions.Delivery.* | Manage versions, packages and deployments, and bulk import them |
Permissions.Releases.* | Manage product releases (announcements), and bulk import them |
Permissions.DeploymentEnvironments.* | Manage deployment environments, and bulk import them |
Permissions.DeliveryMetrics.View | See the delivery measures |