Product trio - Are you walking the talk?
Who doesn't want to work as Inspired? How many are "really" working like that?
This post is inspired by this article from Intercom stating that product teams work best without single leader.
Most products organisations today are mostly aware of the most common teams topologies for “advanced product teams”. This way pictures the product team as a triad - also name core product team - where product, engineering, and design are represented. Nonetheless, I’ve seen others configurations where data, legal, marketing are added as another important piece of that core product team.
Why do we need “core product teams”?
To oversimplify, the main idea to assemble a core product team, is the ability to quickly make decisiones that helps the team to decide what to build. Most of the tasks involved the idea to determine what problem to solve and what is the best solution implement.
Some things we do as part of a core product team are:
participating in customer interviews
prioritise the opportunity to address
brainstorm solutions to solve a specific opportunity
discuss prototypes we want to test with customers
managing-up - present the problems we’re focusing on, ideas to solve it, and the most promising solution to implement
introduce the discovery results to the entire team
Considering that you would need to cover many different aspects of the product, such as how valuable it is for customers, how viable it is for the business, how feasible is to build, and how usable it is by customers, even if you have a SUPER PM, (s)he won’t have enough time nor energy to do everything alone.
When you don’t need a core product team?
If you prefer to make all the decisions unilaterally
You keep perpetuating the dynamics when you used to be a startup (aka HIPPO)
Your manager expect you to herd cats by telling them what to do
You’re not willing to coach people after you introduce this way of work - especially when you were used to work differently
You prefer to in empowered and autonomous teams
How to know if you’re faking it
There are a couple of signals I’ve seen that could tell you:
People reach out always to you when there is a problem
The team must escalate every single decision when disagreement arises
You have OKRs only for the PM
The PM is running technical feasibility while the Tech Lead is involved in people management
All the questions related to the product are answered by the same person (PM in my case)
The PM always runs most of the customer interviews by itself
The PM works as the oracle, crafting the roadmap, priorities, specs, etc. and descends from the mountain with the 10 commandments to implement during the next 6 months
Is there a best way of doing it?
It’s important to recognise that not all organisations must work this way. Even in some scenarios you don’t have the luxury to get a real triad - lack of people, type of product, organisation hierarchy, layoffs, etc.
When it doubt, try to use first principles. Why would you like your product organisation to work this way? What are the things that must change to work this way? What are the things that are going to be required to work that way?
In my day-to-day I have to say we’re more like a duet than a trio. We share a designer with other team, but try to involve him in the decisions when we get together. He participates in every meeting where he is needed. Is this wrong? Aren’t we an advanced product team? Should we be expelled from the selected group of product people who diligently have a trio?
Above all, we value a lot the disagreement. That’s why as a trio, we discuss, we go back and forth multiple times, we iterate, we test. But we know that the most important thing is to provide customer value that reports value to the organisation. That keep us grounded on how we work, and that’s the prime of how I believe every product team should work.
The question I have is, are you really walking the talk?