3 Questions for Empowered Product Teams
I’ve always believed in product teams feeling empowered to make decisions and work collaboratively together as they build something great. There are many ways to bring product teams together to make this happen which include such methods as ensuring tech, design, and product are represented in customer and/or stakeholder meetings or making sure everyone is involved in roadmap development or workshopping a vision together (just to name a few options).
Alternatively, one quick way you can make sure everyone is aligned on the product team is to verify that everyone on the team can answer three questions about the product.
Why are we building this?
The “why” of our problem. Why are we building this? Why is this important for us to work on? Why are we spending time crafting a solution?
This particular question really goes towards the vision of the product. Everyone on the team should be able to comfortably answer this question and frankly it is the most important question of the three questions listed in this article. Having a strong vision that can inspire and set a course for a product is incredibly important. It doesn’t have to be flowery or full of complex language but rather should be something that is clear to understand and something that is easy to refer back to in times of uncertainty.
If everyone on the product team can answer “why are we building this?” then you are well on your way to a strong and empowered product team.
Who are we building this for?
Who are the lucky souls that get to use our product? Who are the stakeholders? Are we working in a B2B context? Is this consumer facing? Do we need to differentiate between those that are purchasing our application and those that are using the application?
The “who” of our three questions goes to those that are using the product we are building. You may find that you need to decide if it’s worthwhile to separate out the “who” into user segments or other classifications but regardless of that, as long as you can answer who you’re building this product for them you are ahead of the game.
How do we know if we are successful?
Our last question goes to what I enjoy describing as the KPI question. KPIs refer to “Key Performance Indicators” and can be used to chart company, employee, and/or product performance. Of course, you may just refer to these data as key metrics, analytics, or other macro descriptions of the product data you are tracking. I remember loving it in college when my professors included a grading rubric with every assignment because it made performance on the assignment incredibly clear. This is the same concept where we want to craft a grading rubric that describes success for the product we are building. You should strive for a minimal set of dense metrics that help you to know if you’re on the right path towards success and everyone on the team should know what these metrics are and regularly check in on them. These key metrics should be discussed regularly and the product team should course correct as necessary in order to stay on track.
Wrap up
There you have it! Three questions that every empowered product team should know.