I recently attended a workshop on Product Management and Agentic AI conducted by IIT Patna, and it was truly an eye-opening experience. Many of the challenges I encounter while consulting for product-based companies directly resonated with core product management principles — reinforcing how closely aligned these domains are.
Every strategy consultant has encountered a familiar challenge: the brilliant recommendation that never quite makes it to reality.
The market was researched. The slides were immaculate. The executive team agreed. And yet, six months later, nothing meaningful had shipped. No users onboarded. No metrics improved. No value delivered.
In today’s world—where change is fast and customer expectations are high—that gap between strategy and execution can be fatal.
This is where product management steps in.
Product management isn’t just a function. It’s a mindset. It brings structure, clarity, and momentum to a strategy. It translates the “what” and “why” of a consultant’s plan into the “how” of a working product. It turns concepts into launches, slides into user stories, and aspirations into measurable outcomes.
Let’s walk through how this came to life in the Hoi project at Delhi Airport—and what strategy consultants can learn from it.
The Challenge at Delhi Airport: When Strategy Isn’t Enough
Delhi Airport serves over 70 million passengers annually. Despite this scale, the airport’s digital experience was fragmented and underperforming. The issues were not theoretical—they were operational, visible, and urgent.
- Passengers needed multiple apps to access food, lounge services, loyalty rewards, and concierge offerings.
- There was no real-time travel intelligence, leaving travelers anxious and uninformed.
- Loyalty programs existed but were poorly used.
- Cross-selling and up-selling opportunities were routinely missed.
- High-value services like Meet & Greet and e-boarding weren’t being effectively monetized.
This was a textbook case of a system designed around internal processes, not passenger needs. The business knew it needed change—but needed a practical path forward.
From Consultant to Product Leader: Bridging Strategy and Execution
This kind of challenge cannot be solved by strategy alone. It requires product thinking. A consultant stepping into this role must shift from being a planner to being a builder. That begins with three simple questions:
- What is the real job we’re helping the user do?
- What is the smallest version of this solution we can build and learn from?
- How will we know it’s working?
The answers form the foundation of the product strategy.
Step 1: Understand the User, Not Just the Market
Consultants are used to starting with market trends, segmentation, and business cases. Product thinking begins somewhere more personal: user behavior, motivation, and pain points.
We used the “Jobs to Be Done” framework to understand what passengers were actually trying to achieve. Not in abstract terms, but in specific moments.
A frequent flyer might want to get from curb to gate with as little friction as possible. A parent flying with two young children might just want to survive the experience without a meltdown.
From these insights, we developed personas—fictional but research-based characters that kept our team focused on real needs throughout development. They gave us clarity, empathy, and direction.
Step 2: Define the Product with Clarity and Precision
Once the user’s needs were understood, the next step was to translate the strategy into something actionable. This is where the Product Requirements Document (PRD) came in.
A PRD is more than a list of features. It’s a living guide to the product that brings together business goals, technical feasibility, and user needs.
Our PRD for the Hoi app included:
- A clear description of the problem we were solving.
- User stories drawn from real personas.
- Functional and non-functional requirements.
- Success metrics aligned with business outcomes.
- Assumptions and risks explicitly called out.
- A prioritization plan for phased delivery.
The PRD became the single source of truth that connected engineering, design, business, and airport operations.
Step 3: Build the Business Case from the Ground Up
Traditional business cases often rely on top-down estimates—total market size, share assumptions, and benchmarks.
Product management adds a bottom-up view. For Hoi, we asked:
- How many passengers are likely to download the app?
- What percentage will use it to pre-order food?
- What’s the average ticket size of those transactions?
- How often will they return?
These inputs allowed us to forecast revenue by segment, test price sensitivity, and model different pricing structures.
We also recommended a hybrid monetization model:
- Commissions on food and lounge bookings.
- Subscription pricing for a “Hoi Plus” experience.
- One-time payments for services like Meet & Greet.
This ensured revenue from high-frequency travelers while remaining accessible to the broader base.
Step 4: Launch a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Instead of building a fully-featured platform that could take a year to launch, we focused on a Minimum Viable Product—a basic but functional version of the app that solved the most critical user problem.
The MVP included:
- Real-time flight tracking.
- Food ordering.
- Airport navigation.
These were the highest-impact, lowest-effort features that could demonstrate value quickly. It gave us feedback, data, and momentum. It also helped the client see results early—an essential ingredient in complex stakeholder environments.
Step 5: De-Risk Through Agile Execution
Strategy consultants are often trained in long-term planning and high-level mapping. But large projects come with uncertainty, and fixed plans can break under pressure.
Agile product development offers an alternative: learn fast, adapt early, and improve continuously.
In the Hoi project, we used Agile sprints to break work into two-week cycles. Each sprint delivered a usable piece of the product. At the end of each, we reviewed results, adjusted priorities, and iterated.
This approach helped manage risk, align teams, and surface problems early. It also kept the strategy grounded in reality—responding to what users actually did, not what we assumed they would do.
Step 6: Measure What Matters
A strategy is only as strong as its ability to be measured.
We created a metric hierarchy for Hoi:
- The primary outcome was app-driven journeys—passengers who used Hoi from check-in to boarding.
- Supporting metrics included daily active users, food order conversion, and time spent on the journey map screen.
- Guardrail metrics ensured we didn’t harm the broader airport experience—like delays or congestion.
We also implemented product analytics tools from the start. This allowed real-time insight into behavior, drop-offs, and user patterns.
Why Product Thinking Makes Strategy Stick
Many consulting strategies fail not because they are wrong, but because they are not built to be delivered. Product management fills that gap.
It gives strategy consultants a richer toolbox:
- Personas, not just segments.
- JTBD insights, not just assumptions.
- PRDs, not just roadmaps.
- MVPs, not just timelines.
- Agile sprints, not just Gantt charts.
- Behavior-based KPIs, not just lagging indicators.
By embracing product thinking, consultants become better partners to clients, better collaborators with delivery teams, and better stewards of the strategies they create.
Final Thoughts: A New Role for the Modern Consultant
The world has changed. Today’s consultants must be more than analysts. They must be translators—connecting vision to action, users to outcomes, and strategy to product.
This doesn’t mean consultants must become product managers. But they must think like them.
They must understand how products are built, how users behave, and how progress is measured. They must know how to write a user story, sketch a funnel, and prioritize features. They must be able to speak to engineering and design teams with clarity and credibility.
In short, they must be builders of value—not just advisors of ideas.
That is the future of strategy. And it starts by learning to think like a product manager.
