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I’m Predictable in an Agile Environment
“Being Agile” and “being predictable” may seem mutually exclusive, at least when it comes to product management. A good sprint cadence creates a predictable frequency of software releases but divining what’s actually in them feels harder. Isn’t the whole point of Agile that we can continuously adjust, making on-the-fly tweaks to seize opportunities? Contrary to some prevailing opinions, managing products in an Agile environment doesn’t mean surrendering planning to the whims of the development team. In fact, Agile can help you be more predictable in some ways. I say this speaking from personal experience. I’m predictable in an agile product environment.
Agile ≠ Chaos
Those unfamiliar with Agile often have some misconceptions about how it really works. Let’s start by dispelling a few Agile myths:
Agile is a free-for-all.
Developers don’t code what they feel like, and the software doesn’t just ship at random points of time. Agile is merely empowering the product development team to make iterative progress while adjusting to incoming data.
Product managers don’t have a role in an Agile environment.
Product managers are still prioritizing features, gathering and synthesizing customer feedback, defining a strategy and product vision, and offering input to the implementation process. None of these tasks go away. You’re no longer writing lengthy product requirements documents with the same exacting detail as before. But developers still both need and value your input.
Dates don’t matter.
Agile certainly embraces a more fluid approach to project management. But if something needs to ship by a specific date, there’s nothing in the Agile Framework preventing it. In fact, by iteratively developing the software over multiple sprints, chances are the desired functionality will ship with fewer defects. Unlike in the waterfall model, it’s reviewed numerous times during the process.
There’s no visibility into what’s happening.
With waterfall, there are often project plans detailing what every resource is doing all the time. Anyone can take a peek and know precisely what folks are up to and how things are progressing. This type of visibility may be murkier during the actual sprint, but that’s not the case before and after. Setting sprint goals before a single line of code is written, and retrospectives (or micro-retrospectives) provides an opportunity to dig into what transpired and improve things going forward.
Plans are useless as everyone chases the latest shiny object.
First of all, once a sprint begins, what the team is working on for those two or three weeks shouldn’t change. The sprint goals remain locked. However, if something new does come up, the sprint planning team (including the product manager) can decide whether it’s worth altering the course for future sprints.
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Applying Agile Values to Product Management
The Agile Manifesto has four core values. These Agile Values are the central tenets that drive everything else. Looking at each one, we can see their potential to make product management (and product managers) more predictable in agile environment.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
At first glance, you may already be scratching your head. How does this make a product manager more predictable? But note that this value uses the word “over” and NOT “instead of.”
There is still plenty of room for tools and processes. Agile needs those to be in place to avoid developers idling and things from getting out of hand. But it also elevates the importance of communication and addressing stakeholder concerns.
By creating more frequent dialogue, there is an increased level of transparency; when people know what’s happening and why they can better predict what’s to come. There’s no black box, no guessing about when things might ship.
In an Agile world, things may change a little more often. But everyone will also know about changes much faster and understand any potential ramifications.
Working software over comprehensive documentation
By removing the requirement for, well, detailed specifications, teams can deliver updates and new functionality faster. This process shortens the distance from prioritization to ship date.
When there are fewer hoops to jump through and hurdles to clear, it’s easier to predict availability. After deciding to build, product managers should have a solid sense of when things will debut. They can then provide clear communication to coworkers and stakeholders.
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Customer-centric companies are committed to doing everything with the best interest of customers in mind. They’re continually processing user feedback and turning those requests and complaints into a better product.
Guess what gets in the way of that kind of responsive, ongoing progress? Having to renegotiate a contract every time something changes. When the lawyers get involved, there’s no telling how long things can get held up.
Removing those entanglements lets teams focus on building a great product. It removes this common source of uncertainty from the equation.
Customers need to pay for things, and a contract might be required. But Agile-friendly companies structure those agreements, so they don’t hinder innovation and iteration.
Responding to change over following a plan
Of the four values, this one seems the most contentious with our thesis. Plans make things predictable, don’t they?
Well, executing a plan properly is predictable. But while the plan’s elements are predictable, you can’t always predict what transpires after a product ships.
Adoption, usage, churn, reviews, net promoter scores… there’s no way to know what’s going to happen until it happens. If you’re operating with an inflexible long-term plan, it’s hard to adjust based on the product’s reception. When the cruise ship is chugging along, it’s tough to change course.
The best part of Agile is being able to measure, learn, and adjust. That means plans must be a little more dynamic instead of plotting out every single move for the next 18 months. That’s why roadmapping is a predictable product manager’s best tool for managing expectations and hitting target goals while still utilizing the benefits Agile has to offer.
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The Art of the Agile-Friendly Roadmap
One reason some product managers can turn negative toward Agile is that their “capstone” project (the product roadmap) might seem at odds with the framework’s fluidity. Well, if your product roadmap is chock full of particular features and exact dates, then you’d be well within your rights to be frustrated.
However, including that level of detail and specificity isn’t the only way to build a roadmap. We’d argue that approach isn’t doing anyone any favors, including product managers.
Feature-Less Roadmap
Instead, product roadmaps featuring goals and themes are usually a much better way to go. Themes illustrate what parts of the product will be worked on at different times, along with the desired outcomes of those efforts. You can escape the trap of promising features and dates—which are inevitably destined to change in an Agile environment—while still communicating the direction and priorities for the product.
If there’s concern that a feature-less roadmap is too vague and open to interpretation, add milestones as specific scheduling targets. This change doesn’t guarantee a particular feature will be available by a specific date, but it conveys that you’ll reach a goal by that time.
Remember, a roadmap’s primary purpose is communicating a vision for how the product strategy will become a reality. Implementation details and schedules aren’t required to build stakeholder alignment.
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Getting on Board with Agile
We get that Agile can sometimes feel like it’s taking control away from product managers and handing over more power and decision-making to the implementation side of the house. But wary PMs should take comfort in a few Agile principles that simplify their ultimate goal of delighting customers.
#1) Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. Customer satisfaction is the first principle of Agile. Not “building cool stuff” or “unshackling the creativity of our development team.”
#2) Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project. We used to throw requirements “over the wall” and see how things shook out. But the ongoing dialogue between product and development should result in products meeting expectations and delivering customer value. Moreover, you get the chance to stick your nose into things every day!
#3) The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face communication. We mean, you might need to attend daily standups. But it also means you’re not spending as much time writing lengthy documents no one ever reads. You can continually assert yourself as the business owner and voice of the customer.
You can be Predictable in Agile
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Our library of content helps thousands upon thousands of product people every month continue their education and understanding of the product space, thought-leadership, best practices, and trends, all for free. You’ll find over 500 blogs and articles, 250 glossary terms, 50+ webinars, 30 books/guides, 15 checklists, and counting live in the Learning Center.
Educating the product community has been a core tenet of LIKE.TG for nearly a decade, and we’re so excited to revamp the experience to empower you with better product education.
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The Learning Center is the central hub of LIKE.TG’s content to educate the product community on best practices and industry trends. Similar to Google Search, you can search for anything product management-related. For instance, we have content on topics from product strategy examples to Agile, presenting a roadmap to stakeholders, change management, and so much more. Of course, if you seek best practices for using LIKE.TG’s roadmap platform, you’ll also find tips in the Learning Center.
You can find light, skimmable reading, more extended downloadable readings, in-depth webinars, and quick video tutorials. You can also filter by a category you’re interested in, like roadmap and roadmap management, product leadership, and Agile or development. Finally, you can also filter by your skill level (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) to elevate your educational journey.
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Our Most Popular Pieces of Content to Get Started
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The 2021 State of Product Management Report
Product Roadmaps: Your Guide to Planning and Selling Your Product Strategy
The Product Strategy Playbook
From Product Manager to Product Leader
What is MoSCoW?
What is Product Development?
The Ultimate Guide to Product Management?
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Implementing an Effective Product Transformation Strategy for the New Year
The new year is right around the corner, and digital transformation continues to be the rage as companies evolve to seek relevance – modernizing systems, procedures, and mindsets for the modern world. CEOs tout the benefits and hype up their planning and investment. Product leaders swoop in to shepherd these efforts. Finally, customers eagerly await the benefits of the shift. Yet 80% of digital transformations fail. What’s causing so many failures? One key factor is a fundamental lack of understanding of product transformation relative to traditional operating models. Many leaders fail to realize that digital transformation must be synonymous with product transformation and the ability for an organization to be successful.
Remarkably, the COVID crisis accelerated the importance and availability of digital customer-facing touchpoints by five years. Companies that stayed on the sidelines face a major uphill battle when they decide to attempt a transformation strategy.
“The COVID crisis accelerated the importance and availability of digital customer-facing touch points by five years.”
For the small group of companies who successfully pivoted, will their product transformation continue or revert back to traditional ways of doing business? The global pandemic has taught us that businesses that remain agile and open to digital transformation will be successful, but that doesn’t guarantee changes in how a company operates.
Digital transformation and product development’s relationship
A strong response during a crisis isn’t a transformation but a reaction. And as soon as the dust settles, many companies risk going back to traditional ways of doing business. The status quo ultimately holds their transformation back. Why not leverage the new year to help your team adapt to this brand-new world?
First, break the mold of top-down management expectations
When facing intense adversity, successful leaders break the mold by loosening the reins and relinquishing their control in the name of survival. Yet top-down management styles quickly return to normal after a crisis. Most companies fail because they revert back to this leadership style.
“A strong response during a crisis isn’t a
transformation but a reaction.”
Gartner reports that 85% of organizations surveyed had adopted or intended to adopt a product-centric delivery model. Open collaboration and creative problem-solving in this delivery model dissolve traditional and rigid operating patterns. You need trust to establish product processes. A well-formed roadmap is your best ammunition to create space and respect.
Implementing an effective product transformation strategy
Fundamental product transformation requires a permanent embrace of effective management strategies and tools to achieve alignment. These strategies help organizations withstand a crisis. Team autonomy is an essential pillar of digital transformation. And many product and technology leaders and executives fail to embrace this concept.
Shift to a product-led mindset
Busting down silos via cross-functional teams and collaboration limits empire-building. C-level executives may not always be a fan-favorite of eliminating silos. Toxic leaders find it uncomfortable to empower individual contributors to make decisions independently.
To effectively manage this scenario, as a product leader, you should shift to a product-led mindset. Your organization can foster the development of an actual product management organization. The organization guides the process and changes the dynamic. A product-led mindset helps to diminish a toxic environment where diverse voices and opinions are pushed to the background.
Bottom-up strategy
Customer-obsessed perspectives drive change and alignment. It’s bottom-up from the customer to the product to the leadership; instead of a versus battle of egos and seniority. Product leaders should understand that the typical customer journey begins pre-purchase—a potential customer identifies a need, researches potential solutions, and ultimately selects a product. Companies are applying various digital tools to cut through the clutter and win customers at this critical stage.
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Digital transformation and Agile methodologies are one and the same
Understanding customers’ needs drive the conflict and set the stage to genuinely embrace Agile and embracing digital transformation. The market dictates what the company should build next. There’s no better way to address that quickly and efficiently than Agile practices. There’s less pushback when the benefits of a shorter time to market and quicker reactions and customer feedback are the impetus.
Iterative development accelerates learning, which is key to product transformation. Product and digital transformation are synonymous with one another. If you want to go through digital transformation, you need to introduce product management as a discipline.
Shorter feedback loops facilitate more efficient resource allocation. It provides early indicators of whether or not a given initiative is on the right track. Few companies have the runway to put all their eggs in one basket while also sustaining asymmetrical attacks from various competitors.
How to set the stage for success with stakeholders
To execute change without adding extra drama and resentment, it’s key to handle the current state properly. Who are the actual stakeholders, and how do they feel about things?
Many important stakeholders may feel hesitant to implement a digital transformation. To mitigate this issue, you’ll need to dig in a little deeper to uncover their pain points. Your product vision should help them see how the product transformation can resolve their pain points.
From there, a clearly articulated vision creates some boundaries and a destination for the process. Below we explore how roadmaps, understanding product transformation, and effective communication can address customer’s pain points and get stakeholders on board.
Roadmaps aid your transformation
In my experience, the best weapon to combat this backsliding and increase the comfort level for stakeholders is a solid product roadmap. This illustration displays the key steps the team will take to achieve strategic goals and objectives and provides a structure for leadership to wrap their heads around.
Complimenting this well-defined roadmap process for crucial product development ensures that things won’t become a free-for-all. Most product teams would rather have a flexible, responsive approach grounded in shared core principles, as well as an adequately socialized strategy aligned with key stakeholders.
The power of visual roadmaps
When a visual roadmap is focused on outcomes versus deliverables, strategy shines through instead of the shiny objects that distract stakeholders and the product team from their actual goals. The roadmap also drives home the transition from thinking about “projects” to focusing on “products.”
Although visual roadmaps may be light on the details, it’s much easier to get stakeholder buy-in, trust, and support when the plan is positioned in terms of themes and objectives rather than dates and specific features. Stakeholders may also relish the opportunity for additional measurables and metrics. They only work when the product is tied to strategic goals and objectives.
Understanding product transformation improvements
Product transformations themselves may also deserve a roadmap of their own. While these might detail the steps required to achieve success, they’re even more valuable by describing the progress these initiatives can make.
By describing both the current and desired state and the mid-transformation improvements along the way, stakeholders can better grasp the importance of this work and the benefits it brings. Each bit of progress must address stated goals for the product or current organizational and operational deficiencies. Rewarding those who greenlight the transformation with tangible, measurable gains.
Targeted transformational change
Product and organizational transformation need to be targeted. These improvements reduce customer support inquiries and increase recurring revenue. The shift speeds up onboarding and cuts down on churn. The shift can bring stakeholders on board and calms their fears about the digital transformation, which for them may seem like a radical change away from traditional manners of business.
Milestones
Regardless of which roadmap you’re working on, milestones are one way to make it real. They demarcate, passing from one gate to the next. Moreover, they provide a sense of accomplishment and achievement that doesn’t always shine through when everyone’s plowing through one sprint after the next.
Avoid communication breakdown during product transformations
So many problems and misunderstandings in organizations stem from communication breakdowns. When embarking on a product transformation, it’s more important than ever to keep folks in the loop and feeling included.
Keeping stakeholders informed
Less is seldom more in these cases since even the biggest proponents of product transformation may still have concerns about particular aspects of the change. Create consistent channels for sharing updates and make sure it’s a two-way street. You may not want their feedback and input, but it’s essential that everyone feels like they have a voice in the process.
If stakeholders remain hesitant about an overall digital transformation, you can ease the process by walking them through the transformation. Stakeholders may also find it helpful if you take the time to explain to them the importance of the Agile process.
Agile eases communication and helps everyone come to a single source of truth, especially stakeholders. Oversharing allows you to avoid having to clean up avoidable messes in the future that might damage stakeholder confidence in the new ways of doing things.
Throw away those outdated playbooks and embrace the future with a product transformation strategy
Change is hard, particularly when things don’t seem particularly broken. But even if a product or business is managing at the moment, digital and product transformation are necessary to survive and succeed in the coming years.
As you fight this uphill battle in preparation for the New Year, take solace in the fact that you’re not alone. Countless organizations continue to resist, dig in their heels, and count on past successes to continue.
Getting stakeholder holdouts to come around requires a multi-pronged effort. Benchmarking against peers and competitor points demonstrates that the old way of doing things holds the organization back. Meanwhile, product leaders can convince the old guard that getting from the current state to the desired destination won’t happen using the rigid top-down rules of yesteryear.
Organizations resistant to embracing product transformation may remain confident that their tried-and-true methods worked before, so they’ll work again. But there’s little evidence to support that. Industries and dominant players continually disrupt other companies willing to use these new tools and techniques. It’s only a question of when—not if—one will come gunning for them as well.
Ready to jumpstart your product transformation strategy? We’re here to help! Schedule a demo to connect with our team of product strategy experts.
The Key to Achieving Change Management Buy-In
Getting change management buy-in is not easy, but we’re only delaying the inescapable when we resist change. Whether it’s driven by economics, technology, politics, or the environment—those massive undercurrents can at best be held at bay before reality sets in.
Most organizations are resistant to change by default. Inertia, process, bureaucracy, and governance are often cited as the primary hurdles. But fear and uncertainty also play an often unspoken-yet-prominent role. The bigger the company, the harder it can be to make even the smallest fundamental shifts.
Yet, those same large organizations face the most risk by not adapting quickly and intentionally. Smaller, younger firms are by nature more agile, and it’s easier to get change buy-in. But small teams also have less to lose. It’s because larger, older companies have so much more at stake that failing to change can be that much more consequential.
For example, my mission in my previous role at a company with over 30,000+ employees was to create a formal change management process or track record to lean on for their CRM system, Salesforce.com, and create a center of excellence around optimizing the firm’s usage of this critical tool.
This wasn’t my first time helping an organization improve its Salesforce.com utilization. I’ve done this for multiple firms from a project management/PMO perspective. I’ve also had experience in change management, having spent eight years previously facilitating those.
Let’s look at the critical steps that can affect the fate of significant transformations for organizations and successfully change management buy-in.
3 Critical Considerations That Affect Change Management Buy-in
1. Intentional thinking from the start.
One fatal flaw many big change initiatives make is letting things “into the wild” before they’re fully baked. However, there might be a follow-on phase to tweak and tailor new tools and processes to the specific impacted groups. Employees won’t always wait until the paint is dry to begin using things.
I’ll use Slack as an example. The asynchronous communication tool can be a huge boost for efficiency and collaboration. But when left to their own devices, early adopters can create some bad precedents.
In this case, if you don’t create the correct channels and train staff how to use Slack properly, it can get out of control. This can both create bad habits and turn people off to the tool before it’s spun up. Yet, a productivity boon can end up as yet another system people use inconsistently.
2. Anticipating downstream ramifications.
Management often initiates changes. A CFO, VP, or a Director thinks there’s a better, cheaper, or faster way to do something. Then they issue an order, and everyone beneath them in the organizational chart deals with the consequences.
But managing change by edict is often a recipe for disaster on the ground floor. Executives frequently don’t have much insight into the day-to-day operations of various teams. Thus they can’t begin to recognize the disruption such a shift might cause.
The power of working groups is effective. People on the ground are the ones that know what’s going on.
Ideally, before a suggested change is even approved, the organization conducts a full forensic analysis of the implications for everyone impacted. That includes employees across the company, as well as strategic partners and even customers. The exercise might uncover potential unintended consequences.
Regardless of how big or small it might be, every change requires a proper communication plan. The key is figuring out how you’re going to engage with everyone, drive adoption, detail the benefits, and get everyone on board.
It should detail the rationale for the move along with any new or modified processes. If necessary, hold training or QA sessions to ensure the roll-out goes smoothly with minimal turmoil during the transition.
3. Centralized change management.
Another key to successful change management is running it all out of a single unit, be it an ad hoc team, a more permanent center of excellence, or a formal PMO. There are many benefits from this kind of organizational structure.
First, it breaks down silos in a way that’s often unattainable organically. This unit can both communicate across the organizational matrix and identify redundant efforts.
This also puts trained practitioners in charge of structuring and facilitating these activities. Since this is what they do, they have the skills, tools, best practices, and resources to make things as seamless and standardized as possible. They also possess the institutional knowledge and expertise to anticipate friction points in advance thus minimizing potential damage via education and well-documented processes.
Most importantly, utilizing a dedicated change management entity gives a holistic view of every major initiative. Regardless of where it began, keep in mind the entire organization and larger ecosystem during execution.
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4 Steps to Achieve Change Management Buy-in
These are the steps for starting things off on the right foot.
1. Survey the landscape.
Until you’re on the inside, it’s hard to know who the real players are. Nor do you know where the power centers lie and which baggage and political legacies influence projects. You see which names are being dropped, who people defer to, who made previous critical decisions or threw up roadblocks.
At one point, I conducted 40 interviews across various groups to get the land lay but could have done more. Once I’ve identified these stakeholders, then I can understand how to best engage with them.
I want to emphasize that it’s imperative to make sure you get things right when evaluating senior management. You need to know their motivations, concerns, and what they value most.
Emotional intelligence is such a key factor as a leader. You can talk about industry knowledge and business process. Still, if you don’t have the emotional intelligence of people around you and their drivers, then you can’t figure out how to motivate them in the best way.
Additionally, not everyone wants to receive information in the same way, nor do we all process it similarly. I make a point of asking key stakeholders right off the bet how they like to be communicated with, so I can try and meet them where they want to be.
2. Define and articulate a vision.
No one’s a fan of change for change’s sake, so the value and purpose of this new role must be crisp, clear, and concise. From the C-suite to the cubicles, everyone should understand why this is important, the steps required, and which benefits the result will bring.
Ideally, present tailored messaging for different audiences to connect with their pain points and address their concerns. But to do this, you need to know who you’re dealing with.
I use the Insights method. To follow this method, first place stakeholders along a color spectrum, and then based on that designation, you can see what triggers stress along with the best ways to remedy that state. I do this to create the best chances for a successful interaction by acknowledging their feelings and speaking to them constructively.
It’s also critical to not immediately dive into the details but rather to establish broader themes that the change will encompass. These themes might seem obvious at times, but a smart and accurate tagline for the initiative can become a helpful mantra and reference point for the project’s life.
3. Get change-buy in with a roadmap.
Significant changes have a lot of moving pieces and dependencies. To get change buy-in, a project or program roadmap can help illustrate exactly how everything will happen. Using a purpose-built roadmapping tool is the answer to keeping everything organized and a clear vision to stakeholders.
Using LIKE.TG, I capture every possible backlog item to ensure no requests or requirements get lost in the shuffle. In this central repository, we used LIKE.TG to prioritize initiatives. I categorize various things up for consideration before putting them into “buckets” to develop and ship together to create incremental value associated with a particular theme.
Then I use a cost and complexity versus impact method for evaluating which items should get to the front of the line, and are happy to slot the low-hanging fruit in the front of the queue to deliver more value to stakeholders faster.
With prioritized themes set, I build my roadmap. I use lanes for “containers” of specific items, which allows me to keep the roadmap clean and straightforward. Less is more about the level of detail presented to most audiences, but there’s always the option to drill down and get more refined information on a specific roadmap element.
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4. It’s all about people.
While tools, frameworks, and processes get a lot of attention, at the end of the day, what determines a significant change’s success or failure is how it is embraced and supported by the individual it impacts.
The key to change management buy-in is having a clear vision and structure people understand so they see the impact of what you’re trying to do and how it affects them. If you don’t think about how they’re going to go about it, it will never be successful. Without engaging with the people who will use it, that will be your number one failure.
Roadmapping with an IMPACT Mindset
The IMPACT approach to product management’s primary goal is creating the maximum value for the broadest target audience while remaining aligned with the company’s mission, vision, and goals. Filtering everything through the IMPACT lens can be extremely beneficial. It helps product teams level set every action, process, and decision to ensure they’re staying true to that objective.
But if there’s one part of product management that needs IMPACT more than anywhere else, it’s roadmapping. Roadmaps set the tone for the coming months and years. They typically direct dozens—sometimes hundreds—of people involved in the implementation and rollout of product releases. Not to mention they dictate what marketing and sales will be able to promote and sell going forward.
No one wants a plan for the future that isn’t exciting, inspiring, and positioning the product for growth and success. Yet far too often, bug fixes, custom client requests, and features of dubious value take up valuable bandwidth. These items snap up spots on the roadmap that would be better filled with innovative, value-added customer benefits and revenue-goosing enhancements.
Where trouble begins
Most product teams don’t set out to create lackluster roadmaps, but they’re often dealt a sub-par opening hand. You ideally begin with the company’s mission and vision. However, many organizations aren’t great at strategy, so there’s often a disconnect between those lofty ideals and reality. Senior leaders’ KPIs and metrics fixate on don’t always align with the long-range objectives and key milestones required to get there.
This leaves the next crucial steps up to product managers. Yet PMs are sometimes given little direction when it comes to setting priorities and goals. This doesn’t prevent them from being met with withering criticism or—even worse—deafening silence when coming up with and presenting a plan. So these roadmappers need a rubric to continually measure the overall impact of their blueprint for the product, and IMPACT can do just that.
Laying the groundwork for a roadmap with IMPACT
IMPACT doesn’t begin with the roadmap. It must be part of the process in earlier stages of product development, particularly during prioritization. According to its own impact, vetting and judging each potential roadmap item culls the herd and eliminates requests and ideas that won’t move the needle where it matters most.
IMPACT also shouldn’t be thought of as a component of the roadmap. There shouldn’t be any swimlanes dedicated to each letter of the acronym. Nor should “Clear” or “Actionable” appear in the legend.
IMPACT’s value comes into play in a few other ways. First, by utilizing the IMPACT scoring approach during prioritization, there will be far more confidence it consists of worthy endeavors stakeholders will agree on merit inclusion.
The roadmap’s overarching themes should also stand up to the IMPACT test. Each major goal and the desired outcome should meet the same criteria that any individual development items have already attained.
You can also judge the roadmap as a whole based on its IMPACT. Looking out six, nine, or twelve months, will the planned themes and projects deliver results that adhere to this credo? If not, what’s driving the prioritization of work that doesn’t improve things along these lines?
Staying true to a roadmap’s true purpose
Product roadmaps aren’t projected plans, schedules, or a laundry list of deliverables. Not that stakeholders don’t try to turn them into that occasionally. You can’t necessarily blame them—these folks are desperate for updates and information that they can use tactically to do their own jobs.
Despite this frequent bastardization of purpose, product roadmaps are supposed to be about why you’re doing something as much as they explain what it is and when it might show up. To shift that mindset, product managers must change up the internal conversations around roadmaps and evolve the organization’s product culture. And here’s one more opportunity for IMPACT to play a role.
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The roadmap is a canvas to tell a story, not a checklist or Gantt chart. And that story is laced throughout with IMPACT. Everything on there should fit the narrative, benefitting users while advancing the corporate strategy.
I personally structure our roadmap by value areas—the value we want to deliver to create that impact. I then structure the legend to reflect our differentiators. Before I actually put anything on the roadmap, its bones already indicate what’s most important for our business.
With that foundation, I can start looking at opportunities, resources, and investments. Combined with using IMPACT for prioritization within each area, I know the product delivers value in all of the most impactful areas.
Interesting
Roadmaps are a way to tell your story visually. They connect your audience with the journey, so they walk away with the most pertinent information. Regardless of what the roadmap contains, it all comes back to why you prioritize that work and tell a story that belies the successes and victories to come after implementation.
Meaningful
Tailoring your roadmap to specific audiences is key by leaving out anything that distracts from the narrative or isn’t relevant to each stakeholder. External customers need to see which problems you’ll solve for them in the coming year. And internal stakeholders want to connect the dots between what’s on the roadmap and their impact on OKRs and KPIs.
People
Put yourself in the shoes of the different people your roadmap is for. Next, customize it for their own areas of interest and concerns. With this relevance top of mind, decide which parts of the roadmap you want to share, how far into the future it should go, and which methods are most effective to communicate your plans.
Actionable
Every roadmap is “actionable,” assuming things are implemented according to that plan. But I tend to worry about what I expect the audience to do with the information they’ve just received? I’m looking for customer validation and feedback, sales and marketing to update their pitches and collateral, customer success to anticipate how they’ll roll this out to customers, and how the technical teams will determine feasibility and make things happen. That means my roadmap needs the necessary information and context to enable these behaviors and actions.
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Clear
Roadmaps should answer existing questions and not raise too many new ones—you’re shooting for generating excitement, not doubts. That’s why conveying the why is vastly more important than the what. Measure their engagement and comprehension based on the questions they ask.
Testable
Roadmaps can also be tested by trying them out on different crowds. Socializing your proposed plan with small groups can generate valuable feedback instead of waiting for a grand reveal and falling on your face when presented with a tough question. Creating that space for failure and challenges gives you additional opportunities to polish things up while also acknowledging that your course may vary based on an always uncertain future.
Impress them with IMPACT
If your roadmap holds up to the IMPACT test, you can confidently enter any presentation. You’ll know that even if everyone doesn’t agree or approve, they can’t argue with your rationale or reasons. You could still get overruled by an executive or a flagship customer, but you can still stick to your fundamentals even if a few wrinkles are thrown your way.
Most importantly, you’ll have value creation on your side as you lobby to retain the items you know will create the most impact for customers and the business. For more examples of how IMPACT can guide your product management endeavors, download the free IMPACT ebook today.
Watch Annie talk through IMPACT: Processes in the webinar below.
Meaningful Product Processes with IMPACT
After reading a blog or a book or attending a conference or talk on product management, I’m always excited to try out the new processes and frameworks I’ve learned about. I try to get my team similarly enthused about this endeavor. But when I check in with them in about a week, you can barely tell that anything had changed… mostly because it hadn’t.
We tend to fall back into how we were doing things before because that cool new process isn’t meaningful in itself. Without the context for why it’s the most important way to spend our time, it wasn’t worth investing in making a change.
So when I tried coming up with my own mindset and mantra for improving product management, I found myself elevating above the flowcharts and execution strategies, looking for something more universal. I wanted to tie together the entire ecosystem and to identify a unifying measuring stick. Something equally applicable to how we prioritize projects as it is to our own careers.
Most importantly, I wanted to invest our time in something that will stick and make us all more productive and efficient product teams. Thus came the genesis of IMPACT, where six words can create a lens to reexamine everything a product professional does to ensure it truly is creating an impact and maximizing the opportunity.
Meaningful Product Processes with IMPACT
Solving Interesting problems that are Meaningful to People, with Actionable plans that are Clear and Testable. That’s what IMPACT’s all about, and if we’re not infusing our processes with IMPACT, then we’re potentially spending our energy on the wrong things.
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Interesting
By making the problem interesting, we start to build momentum. People need a reason to care, so it’s imperative we tell stories and use our storytelling skills in everything we do.
By helping our audience—from sales and marketing to engineering and QA—connect with the customer problem, we will drive better outcomes. We all know that when we focus on value over features, everyone’s happier.
The processes with IMPACT that help ensure we’re working on interesting problems include:
Product discovery—Helps you better understand the customer problem and interestingly tell that story.
Ideation validation—Uncovers more meaning.
Market research—Reveals how others tell their stories and perceive the audience.
Customer feedback—A door into what’s happening and the trends and evolution in the market.
Community involvement—Take any opportunity you can to be where your customers are and get more chances to hear their stories and the challenges they face.
Event participation—Talk to people and learn about their lives outside your product for invaluable context.
Meaningful
Is your solution meaningful to the customer or the business? Remember that excitement about an idea doesn’t always translate to value. The real test is how much they’re willing to pay for it, which truly shows how much they value the solution.
Aside from generating revenue, it’s also important to check if the solution aligns with the business’s direction, vision, and values. These processes with IMPACT can help you articulate what’s meaningful to business:
Vision Mission—Although it’s often handed down from senior management, it still influences your work. You should be able to articulate how your solution aligns with the vision and mission. Then, prioritize things when necessary to create those connections.
Strategy/Strategic Alignment—It should include a definition of value that the product is trying to deliver and what success looks like.
Gracefully Saying No—If that really compelling idea doesn’t create meaning, communicate that to teams and customers ASAP, then move on.
Roadmapping—Include components of the meaning and value you’re creating, as well as why it’s the right thing to do.
People
You must figure out the pervasiveness of the problem you’re solving and how many people will care. What will solving this problem unlock in the market?
Alongside understanding your research in solving the problem with a specific solution, it’s also essential to know how that investment may accelerate other innovations or solve related problems. This can lead to exponential growth and new opportunities beyond the original scope and scale of the situation.
By using as broad a lens as possible, you can also determine if you’re making a big impact for a small number of people or a small impact for a big number of people… both of which are worthy and sound investments, assuming there’s a willingness to pay. These processes can help quantify things:
Competitive Analysis—Helps you understand which problems competitors are solving and how they frame them. Not to mention figuring out which ones they’re NOT solving.
Market research—Helpful, but determine upfront how much you need to know to be confident to move forward to avoid analysis paralysis.
Surveys—Determine who cares about this problem and how frequently it occurs.
Jobs To Be Done/Opportunity Tree—Another tool to assess the problem’s pervasiveness and how big a deal it really is.
Prioritization—Be sure you’re accounting for the people that will be impacted by value creation. Not catering to the whims of internal stakeholders or finicky edge cases.
Segmentation—Use this to define your target market and zoom in on the people who will truly benefit and appreciate the value of your solution.
Actionable
Coming up with a great idea is pretty easy. Go ask a first grader, and they’ll give you some amazing, innovative ideas… that are completely unfeasible. Your job is to narrow things down to what’s possible, reasonable, and probable.
You need to know you can deliver the solution, regardless of how big or important the problem is. These processes can serve as a reality check on what’s truly doable:
Squads/Team Composition—More effective teams, benefit the entire company. They must be constructed to get an optimal cross-section of talent and compatible personalities and work styles.
Product Development processes—Find time to evaluate feasibility and LOE as early as possible to avoid wasting cycles un impractical pathways.
Ideation/Validation—All ideas are welcome, but only those truly actionable given how the solution is framed should be pursued.
Dependency Analysis—Larger teams, create more dependencies. Those dependencies increase the odds that the market will pass you by while you sort things out.
Clear
To build consensus, generate enthusiasm, and win over skeptics, you must be able to articulate the value statement of the solution clearly. This not only will help you secure resources and support for the project, but it also has a downstream impact on sales and marketing, as well as eventually how customers react to the value proposition.
Some key processes contribute to making sure the impact of the solution is clear to everyone:
Roadmap/Road Show—You want to make sure it’s in front of audiences frequently enough that it’s current, accurate, and remains top of mind. This is especially key when there’s not yet a lot of trust in you or your ideas. It’s also crucial to ensure the roadmap presents the right amount of information for the specific audience. You don’t want to drown them in details or rush through the items they particularly care most about.
Alignment—You want to be sure you’re all using the same language, OKRs, prioritization, etc., so you’re all happy with the result.
Cross-Functional Collaboration—Evaluate how and when you interact with peers to be sure it’s frequent enough. These interactions should be in settings where they’ll feel heard and can have their concerns addressed.
Documentation—People don’t read (except amazing blog posts like this!). Is it accomplishing what you need it to do? Does it match the TLDR summary you included at the top?
Testable
Humans aren’t very good at knowing what they need, just articulating what they THINK they need. Therefore you must validate that the planned solution is valuable as early as possible.
Embrace the sunk cost philosophy early and often. Additionally, don’t be afraid to walk away or initiate a significant course correction at any stage. This is only possible by leveraging processes that put your ideas to the test:
Agile Product Development—Agile is about more than replacing waterfall; it’s how you can test, learn, and adjust. With Agile, you can forward efficiently while leaving room for learning moments and making corrections based on those findings.
Beta Processes—It’s never too late to learn and change. Set expectations internally and with customers while capturing feedback during beta tests. Thisisn’t just a dress rehearsal but rather a chance to get real-world experience on what you think will work.
Iterative Design—Boil things down to the smallest step you can take to deliver value. Then test, learn, and repeat.
Usability Studies—You need tools to test and verify. So watching real customers try to use your product is one of the best options there is.
For more insights into how you can apply IMPACT to your processes, watch the webinar or download the free e-book today.
Why Gender Diversity Leads to Better Products
In the 2021 State of Product Management Report, our annual collection of data designed to bring to life the trends driving product management, we found gender diversity, or lack thereof, a prime opportunity for product management teams to create more intentional inclusivity.
Let’s further understand where things currently stand with gender diversity in the product management space. Additionally, we’ll explore ways to move the needle toward greater inclusivity and, ultimately, better business outcomes.
Where are the Women in Product?
Today’s data indicates we have plenty of room for improvement if our sights are set on greater inclusivity. In the tech industry, men outnumber women, and in technical roles especially. In product management, men outnumber women almost 2:1.
Two key findings stood out to us in our 2021 report: men hold 65% of senior roles and, on average, earn 7% more than women in product management.
Let’s walk through the report’s data to understand better what the current product management landscape looks like in terms of gender inequality.
Currently, the product management space is predominantly held by 60% men, 37% women, along with 3% that either prefers not to disclose or identify as non-binary.
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This isn’t what the numbers showed just two decades ago when greater gender diversity in product management. Deborah Liu, VP of Product at Facebook, explains:
“In the early to mid-2000s, Product Management at tech companies had almost the same number of men and women. So they came up with the solution to filter down to technical PMs, [with] the requirement that they have a degree in computer science—or a related field like electrical engineering. Unfortunately, in 2005, women only earned about one in five CS degrees in the US, which continues today. I believe that the new technical requirement changed the pool of potential PMs to one which was heavily male-dominated and thus unintentionally led to the industry moving away from gender-balanced teams.”
Women in Senior Management
The impact of the years with fewer women in product, plus the higher churn of women in this role, is finding its way into senior leadership. Just 36% of senior product roles are held by women, compared to 64% held by men.
To compound matters further, churn in tech is much higher for women. According to a Harvard Business School study, 41% of women leave a decade after starting in tech, compared to 17% of men.
Of course, the global pandemic didn’t do women in the workforce any favors. On the contrary, it “set women’s labor force participation back more than 30 years.” As a result, nearly 3 million women dropped out of the workforce in 2020.
On the subject of gender inequality in senior management, Martin Eriksson, co-founder, and chairman of Mind the Product, writes:
“A University of Maryland study looking at 15 years of data from the SP1500 found that female representation in senior management brought informational and social diversity benefits, enriched the behaviors exhibited by managers throughout the firm, and motivated women in middle management. All of which resulted in improved individual and company performance – especially where the firm’s strategy was focused on innovation, in which context the informational and social benefits of gender diversity and the behaviors of more diverse teams had a bigger impact.”
Salary Earnings for Women in Product
Inclusion and innovation may go hand in hand, but women are still earning less than their male counterparts in nearly all occupations.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women’s annual earnings were 82.3% of men’s earnings in 2020. The salary gap is even wider for women of color.
Salary discrepancies between men and women tend to vary by the number of years of experience. However, overall, men make 7% more than women in product management. While there is certainly work to do, women in product management (and technology in general) have made strides in recent years to reduce this gap.
That being said, men, on average, earn a higher salary (based on years of experience) at every level than their female counterparts.
7% more for 0-2 years
2% more 3-5 years.
3% more 6-10 years
9% less 11-15
less than 1% more than 15 years
Not surprisingly, advanced degrees play a role in commanding a higher salary. In addition, data shows that men in product tend to have more advanced degrees than women.
Imposter Syndrome and Career Goals
Our report also found that women in product are 14% more likely to frequently or consistently feel imposter syndrome in their careers than men. For the lucky few that only rarely or never feel it, 19% were women, and 26% were men. Additionally, women are more likely to feel neutral or unhappy about their work compared to men.
Nearly half of product people say their 10-year career goals are to become a product leader. According to our report, both women and men see product leadership in their future. However, many women are looking at product leadership for more years of their careers. After a while, mens’ goals shift toward starting their own company—the second most voted category.
That’s a current snapshot of the state of gender inequality in product management. So how do we move the needle towards greater inclusivity?
Read what women bring to product management.
Inclusivity is the Future
The need for greater inclusion was never more top-of-mind for many product teams than in 2020.
Studies show that gender diversity in teams produces better results. Inclusion helps us perform better. Groups of diverse problem solvers outperform groups that share everyday experiences, backgrounds, and identities.
Put, more voices, experience, and perspectives in product development translate to better products out in the world. Therefore, prioritizing inclusivity is the way forward.
In “Why Diversity Isn’t Just Right, but Smart,” Eriksson asserts:
“A good product team needs a mix of design, tech, and business, a mix of genders and backgrounds, a mix of industry experience and product management experience, and a mix of skills from the visionary to the detail-oriented, from the data-hungry to the user research fanatics. This level of diversity is not just the best chance you have of representing your audience, but also ensures you’re always bringing the best experience to bear on any product challenge you face.”
Benefits of Gender Diversity Across the Organization
Gender diversity is linked to greater profitability and better customer experiences. It also helps companies attract and retain talented people.
Mina Radhakrishnan, the co-founder of Different and 1st Head of Product at Uber, believes that:
“The more identities, backgrounds, and experiences represented by founders and product managers, the more problems solved, the more user perspectives understood, and the more products launched by teams who have a handle on how the world will receive them.”
According to the Diversity Council of Australia, people who work in inclusive teams are:
10x more likely to be highly effective
9x more likely to innovate
5x more likely to provide excellent customer service
19x more likely to be very satisfied in their jobs
4x more likely to remain with their current companies
2x more likely to receive regular career development opportunities
Yet despite these compelling correlations between gender diversity and better business outcomes, gender representation only increased by 2% between 2015 and 2018.
Want to improve your sphere of inclusivity? Here are some of the women in product management you should be following.
Groups Driving Inclusive Policies and Practices
Several groups are actively discussing advocating for equal representation in product management.
The nonprofit Women In Product, founded in 2016, has a mission to “equip women to thrive in product management careers at all levels.” Created to connect women in the product field while also advocating for a more diverse workplace, it has 27 chapters worldwide, more than 33,000 community members. It hosts 125+ annual events to increase access to resources for skill development and offer exposure to opportunities with allied organizations that are “driving innovation through inclusive policies and practices that encourage mobility for women in product.” The organization’s vision is to ensure that “all people in product have equitable opportunities to build rewarding careers and shape the products of the future.”
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Similarly, the Advancing Women In Product (AWIP) organization is dedicated to providing members with “the right skill sets and executive mentorship” that women need to accelerate careers in product management. It also has chapters around the world.
Get inspired by these six fantastic product managers who also happen to be women.
Going Beyond Gender Diversity
We have to be careful not to view gender diversity as just another box to check. In the quest to achieve greater inclusivity, this can potentially become a pitfall.
In “Diversity in Product Management Needs to Go Beyond a Gender Agenda,” Amanda Ralph, co-founder of Product Women, urges product teams also to seek cognitive diversity:
“Good product managers know what many in social sciences are now evidencing – that effective teams not only have diverse backgrounds and experiences but importantly, are cognitively diverse and inclusive. Actively including and seeking diverse perspectives and thinking (cognitive diversity) leads to better outcomes.”
Ralph adds, “We must have a culture which is not only inclusive but which also actively mobilizes and leverages the different perspectives that diversity invariably brings.”
Striving for cognitive diversity in the workplace might sound like an overwhelming challenge. Thankfully, organizations like Inclusion Ventures help teams and companies develop strategies for decreasing bias and enhancing inclusion.
Learn how to recognize and reduce cognitive bias as a product manager.
Moving the needle towards greater inclusivity is a marathon. To make meaningful strides towards gender diversity, we first have to reckon with where things stand today.
The goal of any product team should be to build great products. Inclusivity can help shape this outcome. It attracts more voices, experience, and perspectives to your product team. And ultimately, the products you build and release into the world will be better for it.
6 Product Leadership Interview Questions and Answers
Every hire is essential, but a new product leader’s impact ranges far beyond their contributions. They’ll have a major influence on their team, which affects the colleagues they interact with the most. While also having a significant impact on corporate goals, priorities, and tactics. Before hiring a product leader, you need to ensure that you understand the most essential product leadership interview questions that can help better inform your hiring decision.
It’s like when you hire a new head coach. They bring in some of their assistants, put individual contributors into new roles, and utilize their terminology and playbook, giving them an outsized effect on the entire organization.
If you’ve done it right, a new product leader will make you a little uncomfortable. They bring in some diverse opinions and the stature to share and back those up. Additionally, they’ll probably have a skill set that makes you a little insecure about your resume.
Though you may feel insecure about a new product leader in the long term, the new hire will contribute to your product team. Ultimately, this uneasiness is what leads to growth and positive change. However, new product leaders do still need to fit in a little bit. Unless you genuinely want to rock the boat and shake things up in a big way.
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What Experience to Look for When Interviewing
Before you ever hop on the phone or a Zoom or meet in person with a candidate, you’ll already know plenty about their experience. There might be some career rehashing as part of the interviewing process. But they didn’t make it this far if their resume wasn’t a pretty good match for your needs.
So instead of fixating on their work history, get a feel for what makes them tick—your candidate’s motivations matter. You want to know what they like most and least about working in product to understand their passions and preferences.
“Product” roles vary so much from one company to the next. Make sure their skills and interests align with what your organization needs from them. It’s also crucial that they’re excited about addressing your customer base’s specific challenges and needs.
Understand How They’ll Fit with The Team
Envision what hiring them would mean for their team. Does the candidate address the underlying needs, and will they help the team grow?
Soft skills are the other area that can’t be explored by simply looking at their LinkedIn profile. You can teach some product management fundamentals and train them on tools and processes—but you can’t teach curiosity and passion.
You’re looking for examples of how they’ve used their passion for a product to get things done in challenging environments, built consensus, and delighted customers. You want specifics about how they’ve overcome obstacles and expanded their knowledge. Learning about the meaningful impacts on the lives of their users are the “juicy bits” you’re looking to extract from your time together.
Not Every Product Manager Should Be (or Wants to Be) a People Manager.
Good salespeople often make terrible sales managers because the skills that help you close a deal are entirely different from those that help you motivate your staff. While there’s a little more overlap on the product side, the same dynamic is also in play. Someone who loves immersing themselves in the details of their specific domain may not have the mental and emotional skills to add value across multiple products and product staff at a higher level.
With this in mind, it’s important to remember that people can climb the corporate ladder without necessarily taking on people management duties. Paying attention to how candidates answer some of your questions can help you steer them into the more appropriate track.
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Some people thrive on identifying problems, connecting with customers, and getting into the weeds to find new opportunities. These folks are best suited for individual contributor roles. They will likely find people management responsibilities unfulfilling even if they think that’s the job they need to advance their career.
Others thrive on amplifying their impact. While they’re still passionate about solving customer problems, they’re interested in building out skills and processes for the whole team. They’re able to trust others and delegate so they can focus on the big picture.
6 Product Leadership Interview Questions to Ask
In my experience, these are six of the most common questions that get asked. I’m also pointing out what you should pay attention to when they answer.
Question 1: Tell me a story.
The best way to prove someone’s storytelling chops is to ask them to tell you one. Crafting a compelling narrative is an essential tool in generating consensus and enthusiasm for ideas. Thus, you’ll want to see how they do.
I prefer a story describing an end-to-end production process and its results. So I’m looking for a few critical elements in their response:
Verb selection: Did they “direct” or “collaborate”? Were they echoing the voice of the customer or just writing up product requirements? Is there some heart and emotion in their retelling? Or is it a simple regurgitation of the facts and events that transpired?
Data: Do you think this was the right project for your team? How did they measure success? Product managers can’t always measure the success of a product. Many companies are lacking in this area, so I don’t blame them if it’s lacking. But I want to see at least some awareness of the value of using metrics and how they considered implementing them. Plus, I want to make sure they’re not just quoting proxy metrics with no apparent correlation to the customer or business goals, as that’s a warning sign as well.
Expansiveness and inclusiveness: How insular are they? Are they considering other stakeholders, departments, and customers in their processes? Product leadership is about more than bossing around your direct reports. You must also establish and value strong relationships with folks across the organization.
Question 2: Which products do you love?
This question provides you a little peek behind the shiny veneer candidates who are cloaking themselves in during the interview process. An exact answer will reveal something about what matters to them and what draws their attention. Keep in mind that something vanilla and obvious signals a lack of depth and creativity.
Besides just getting to know them as a person, it’s also a glimpse of what they appreciate as product professionals. Do they gravitate to generic products they use every day? Or are they more enthusiastic for brilliant technical or design solutions to tough challenges?
Their mentioned solutions truly energize the ideal candidate. Saying products that ingeniously yet quickly improve the lives of their customers while boasting a solid business model is critical. You have another opportunity to evaluate their storytelling skills.
Question 3: A question about your product.
They’ve seen the solution (the product they’re interviewing to work on), and now you want to know if they can identify the customer problem it’s solving. It’s time to flip the script and let them show off their product management skills.
It’s also a chance to see if they’ve done their homework and understand what you’re trying to do. I want to know that they not only understand the concept but that they get the actual application. If they weren’t curious enough to dig into the job they’re interviewing for, will the candidate go the extra mile to communicate with the team effectively?
Your product is a solution designed to address a customer challenge. How much of that customer problem could they intuit from the website or checking out the product itself?
We have an unfair advantage at LIKE.TG since product managers are our actual customers. So there’s no excuse here if a candidate isn’t familiar with the customer problems we’re trying to solve. I’ll often ask them more pointed questions given that familiarity, such as probing into what additional value we could provide their product management team or what other opportunities and challenges lie ahead for us given their intimate understanding of the space.
Learn how to grow a successful product team:
Question 4: Describe your ideal workflow/relationship with User Experience and Engineering.
Though there are no correct answers, you may find that there are also many wrong ones. Instead, this question puts a spotlight on their penchant for collaboration.
Everyone comes to the table with their strengths—product understands the customer problem, UX lives to delight customers and creates frictionless user experiences. Engineering knows the technical boundaries and opportunities at hand. I want product leaders who recognize our collective strength lies in the sum of these parts. They’ll check their ego in the interest of jointly creating customer value.
I honestly don’t care which processes candidates bring up, as long as they are logical workflows that incorporate stakeholder alignment and goal-driven outcomes. Making everyone feel like they’re an essential partner in the process is in many ways more vital than the process itself.
What matters most here is breakingdown silos, playing to people’s strengths to help them grow, and the flexibility to adapt to the situation at hand.
Question 5: How do you prioritize?
There are dozens and dozens of ways to tackle this task, and once again, I’m not seeking any particular framework or methodology. I’m using it as a lens to see how they process information from various sources and turn that into a coherent vision.
In particular, I’m always wary of candidates coming from places where it was a top-down, CEO-calls-all-the-shots vibe. That type of environment limits a PM to just executing things. I’m also not interested in someone when they’ve just bounced around priorities based on whatever their most extensive and newest customers demanded.
I’m looking for stakeholder alignment, rapid assessment of new developments, and (obviously) leaning on a solid roadmap to pull it all together. An objective element in the prioritization process (scoring, weighting, etc.) is also a big plus in their favor.
Question 6 – Show me your superpowers.
I rarely present an offer letter to a candidate that hasn’t illustrated how they work. While “test projects” have fallen out of favor, I still want to see their capabilities. To achieve this, I create scenarios to evaluate better how they’ll operate if they land the job. Time-box these so they don’t spin out into a lengthy assignment.
For example, I had a candidate with all the correct answers, yet they seemed more concerned about their own opinion than the necessary collaboration great products require. I created a scenario intentionally missing critical information. I was looking to see whether they asked questions or requested help instead of just barreling ahead without essential details.
Don’t be afraid to throw a curveball.
Throwing in a new piece of information halfway through a scenario is another excellent test of their mental agility. Product managers must deal with competitors launching out of the blue, unexpected customer requests, technical hurdles, and unanticipated market changes. How they adapt is a fantastic peek at their ability to remain strategic while remaining flexible in high-pressure situations.
Given the increasing number of remote teams—including our engineering team—not to mention the many companies that will remain remote until the last embers of COVID-19 die down, communication skills are at a premium. Navigating the communication styles and utilizing a product roadmap to ease communication amongst teams matters much more when everyone isn’t in the same room.
One scenario to test this is picking a near-term roadmap initiative and asking them to summarize who needs to be involved, when, and to what degree. A good barometer asks the potential new hire to pen a press release and an internal email.
While not everyone will be thrilled about any of these “tests,” you can explain that these exercises significantly shorten interview times. It would help if you let them do some of it asynchronously. And, if they have work samples that would convey the same aspects of their work style and output, you should welcome them.
Quality Over Quantity
Whether you incorporate all, some, or none of the above questions into your product leader interviewing process, I urge you to concentrate on fewer, higher-quality questions over a barrage of smaller ones. You’ll get more meaningful data on which to base your decision. Candidates will also get a better sense of the environment they would be entering if hired.
Creating Equitable User Experience for Your Customers with Brittany Edwards
Every individual has a unique way they perceive and interact with the world around them. Recent reports claim that diverse organizations outperform their competitors by 35%, according to a recent report by McKinsey Company. The report also concluded that gender-diverse organizations outperform their nearest competitor by 15%. McKinsey Company’s report proves that product managers need to create an equitable user experience for their customers.
Throughout life, we bring our preconceptions, biases, fluencies, capabilities to the table. As a consumer, that’s usually not a huge problem. We find ourselves judging our own experiences, purchases, and solutions. If a product doesn’t meet our needs, we can find something more suitable for our needs.
Of course, not all individuals have the freedom of choice. When your boss requests that you use the new ERP system, workplace etiquette requires you to follow up on the request. When the bus or subway, or train pulls up to the stop, we can’t request a different model that’s a better fit. We must do our jobs and get to our destinations.
So what happens when that ERP system uses terminology employees don’t understand? And what if the bus doesn’t have a lift for our wheelchair?
Unfortunately, users may find themselves in a precarious situation due to decisions made by a product team. Software that remains intuitive and self-explanatory to novice users remains the most accessible. Product managers who do not account for these may get left behind by a market inclined to buy a product from a fair organization.
What Is an Equitable User Experience?
You can’t expect to make everyone happy all of the time. Product managers know this self-evident truth quite well.
That’s why we define our target markets and user personas. Product managers understand that building a product that satisfies everyone remains impossible. Chasing after all those edge cases leads to ballooning costs and lengthy delays for increasingly diminishing returns.
Why is an equitable user experience important?
Our ability to dismiss different cohorts can drive us to whittle down our total addressable market. An effective manager who utilizes a product roadmapping tool to strategize with their product team maintains a viable product. Product managers ensure that the product supports the financial stability of the organization. Moreover, they rule out unlikely use cases and vertical markets that don’t align with our strategy.
As product managers, we have to make choices that narrow the usability of our products. These choices don’t end with unusual applications. A product manager’s decision can increase the degree of difficulty for usersProduct teams rarely set out to create a product for a small subsection of the population. Instead, we would like to provide our customers with the best product possible.
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Why should you broaden the scope of your product?
Understanding the scope of your product influences the downstream decisions. As product managers, we understand the importance of thinking about who out there could use our product. When we do not broaden our market share, we isolate many subsections of society.
We often don’t realize how limiting those decisions might be. When we look around at our peers, our friends, our neighborhoods, and our families, we only see a sliver of the full population. We design for the “average consumer, ”which remains a flawed concept. Product teams need to develop products for a range of physical, cognitive, sensory, cultural, and socioeconomic variances.
Furthermore, your product should create a fair user experience. Oftentimes product teams fail to solve use cases or accommodate everyone. A product’s financial viability may also cause issues. As a product manager, you might determine that costs limit your ability to create a full user-friendly experience.
Developing a More Equitable and Inclusive Product Experience
Brittany Edwards—digital product manager and co-founder of Incorp[HER]ated—believes product teams must think beyond the types of people they see in the office. Some of this comes with who we choose to hire into our product teams, to begin with.
“If you don’t have a diverse organization and you’re not sure about what you don’t know or aren’t ready to acknowledge it, then the research you do is where you’re comfortable,” Edwards said in a recent webinar on Product Management Trends.
Companies need to break free of this unintentional-yet-ingrained limited perspective. Product teams must make a concerted effort to venture beyond their comfort zones.
“It’s all about identifying who your customer base truly is,” Edwards said, “Really push the boundaries of your definition of your customer.”
Product teams set out to understand what their users find difficult within the context of the product experience. That means talking to people, conducting usability sessions, and adopting best practices. If you search for opportunities to improve, things can always get better.
Of course, this inclusiveness can only go so far while still being practical. “It’s okay to be somewhat exclusive,” Edwards continued. “But acknowledge that and the risks that are associated with it.”
Potential roadblocks towards inclusiveness.
With so many avenues to increase inclusivity, there’s no shame in using an ROI as part of your analysis. If you can increase your target market by a few percentage points, you don’t have to worry if it’s fair. Instead, view every effort as a net positive.
You need to expand your potential market by doing the right thing. You should work to ensure your “starting point” remains unbiased. Challenging assumptions and remaining thoughtful in the design process.
Yet this only happens when there is time, space, and permission given to think about these unconscious defaults. As a product manager, you need to unpack the processes that lead to exclusion in the first place.
Accommodations Get Used in Unexpected Ways
The American Disabilities Act has been shaping public life since 1990. Federal and state regulations mandate that buildings provide ease of access for those with disabilities.
These sets of regulations make life easier for those suffering from a wide range of physical and mental limitations. They’re not the only ones who benefit. Parents with strollers also use those ramps, as well as shoppers with arms full of groceries.
ADA-driven changes provide value to everyone who uses them. They’re also an important reminder that product decisions made to accommodate one part of the market can end up benefiting many more people.
Some product managers may view the inclusion-driven activity as a costly exercise. Yet, it can enhance the user experience for much broader swaths of customers. Providing an option to increase the text size can attract older users, as well as those who have vision problems.
Expand Your Product’s Horizons
Your inclusive design can sometimes cause more problems and slow down innovation. For example, your product team may have to add in speech-to-text interfaces or develop a VR system that has accessibility features for individuals with a disability.
However, every step taken to make your product more accessible increases its utility for a broader set of users, creating organic growth opportunities for your product. Consumers will continue purchasing from you if they feel that the product provides accessibility, as well as functionality. By innovating the accessibility of your products, you have the opportunity to push your competitors towards producing an equitable product.
Over time, inclusive design becomes routine. “What about this?” and “what about that?” become welcome questions during ideation, design, and development.
Take the next steps toward creating an equitable user experience by:
Hiring more diverse teams
Talking to a wider variety of customers and potential users
Creating space and time to hear about a broader set of concerns and issues
Ensuring usability tests include different ages, races, shapes, sizes, genders, sexualities, geographies, educational levels, income ranges, and physical and cognitive capabilities
Asking your teams what else can we do to make things simpler, more accessible, and friendlier to as many constituencies as possible
Inclusivity and equity are about more than paying lip service to vocal minorities or being politically correct. There are a billion people with disabilities. The LGBTQ community has $3.6 trillion in buying power. The U.S. population is more than 30% Black and Hispanic.
Lastly, it’s simply good business to broaden your target market, and the brands doing so are seeing positive returns on their commitments to this practice. Don’t be caught on the wrong side of history with a product designed to serve only a small array of society rather than a universal equitable user experience.
LIKE.TG Named Fortune’s Great Places To Work Top 100 Small Businesses in 2021
On behalf of the LIKE.TG team, we are excited and honored to share some exciting news. Along with the honor of getting certified as a Great Place to Work (May 2021—May 2022),we earned the recognition of Fortune’s 2021 Best (Small or Medium) Workplaces.
Although one of our team’s values is humility, I wanted to take a moment to say, “heck yeah!” Thank you to the entirety of the team for your efforts navigating this past year.
What Did This Year Look like for LIKE.TG?
Like many companies, we practically learned overnight how to manage our business differently with the onset of the pandemic. The process of placing our operating practices and guiding principles under a microscope allowed us to solidify what was working well and what we needed to improve.
In particular, we saw the need to be more intentional about how we build a great culture. LIKE.TG believes how employees act when nobody is looking defines company culture. We felt alignment become even more critical in a world where our team is all working remotely. We also know people want to work alongside people they trust.
Strong values alignment becomes even more critical as a company scales and growth accelerates. In the past year alone, our business doubled in size. We released several key product enhancements. Product organizations utilized these enhancements to help simplify the shipment of products.
What’s Our Secret Sauce?
So how did we win Fortune’s 2021 Best (Small or Medium) Workplaces over the ten thousand contending companies? We believe a key was really clarifying and subsequently living by those values that bind us.
LIKE.TG’s core values assist in recognition as one of Fortune’s great places to work.
Hustle: We’re passionate about what we’re doing. But we hustle to preserve time with our friends and family. We empower employees to own the outcome. We encourage them to want to win because it means we are making an impact as a whole.
Humility: We listen first and ask questions when we don’t have the answers. We approach interactions and problems with curiosity and adjust our course when needed.
Heart: We want our work to have meaning, and we care deeply for our team, our customers, and our society at large. We embrace the visible and invisible differences to create a place where people feel safe speaking plainly and being the best version of themselves.
“I’m really proud of how the team exemplifies Hustle, Humility, and Heart every day. We help our colleagues’ career paths grow and develop. I’ve loved getting to see team members get the chance to move into different teams and get promoted into new roles from a manager of customer success, becoming a product manager to a customer success manager, becoming a sales engineer. Seeing folks get the chance to spread their wings, try something new, and move forward is core to what I think Hustle, Humility, and Heart mean in our workplace.” – Diana Ciontea – Finance
“We work with real people. We’re not just numbers and jobs to be done. The team gets to know each other and spends time caring about each other’s interests, and there’s trust built there. I trust that my colleagues are putting in their heart, with humility and they’re hustling in everything they do that helps us remember that we’re all people behind the job.” – Nick Fields – Product management
[VIDEO on Heart Humility and Hustle]
Fostering Connection at LIKE.TG
After the Black Lives Matter protests, we came together as a company to openly share how people were feeling. It was particularly moving to hear people speak plainly about what this topic meant to them while also serving as a time to catalog our practices. These conversations inspired the creation of our diversity and inclusion task force. This cross-functional collaboration has spawned various initiatives, including mental health days, a fundraiser for disadvantaged children, and a fresh look at the hiring process.
LIKE.TG’s biannual “Fest.”
Another critical moment for our team was launching our first, all remote, teamwide gathering we call Fest. In the past, Fest represented a biannual event where in-office and remote coworkers would convene for social and educational activities. Activities included presentations from customers to lightning talks where employees volunteer to present on a topic of passion and trivia at a local brewery, to name a few. This event represented a great way to cultivate strong team alignment, especially since most of our team lives outside Santa Barbara. As we all know, large in-person gatherings weren’t on the agenda this past year, so we had to improvise.
The process of building a weeklong schedule to support a 100% remote Fest helped flesh out many of the lingering habits ingrained from in-office work that didn’t support remote workers. While we all look forward to a face-to-face Fest again, we believe the emphasis on learning how to do remote work well sets us up for longer-term success.
Inspired by feedback from our team, we have since launched a mentorship program and a Culture, Collaboration, and Connection (CCC) monthly meetup. At CCC, in a small group setting, we tackle various topics ranging from the company’s long-term strategy to learning more about each other’s interests outside of work.
Trust and Strategy at LIKE.TG
Some of us may have worked in lower trust or what some may call ‘political’ environments. People often expend unnecessary energy in the wrong areas. Also, those environments tend to stifle open communication among teams. We believe that the best ideas can come from anywhere. Consequently, it is incumbent upon our organization to ensure processes amplify and encourage the sharing of information.
A great example is how information our team gathers from customers finds its way into our product prioritization process. The bulk of our team is talking with our customers every day. Harnessing insights from these conversations is foundational to our strategy especially given how quickly the product management space evolves.
Trust, or a lack thereof, is something we know product managers often grapple with internally. Often, they feel frustrated conveying to stakeholders how and why things need prioritization. Ultimately, we see our role at LIKE.TG as helping our customers instill greater trust within their own organization.
“It feels like my input is valued here. We work hard, but we love the work we’re doing because we know it’s positively impacting on ourselves, our customers, and the world.” – Sierra Newell – Marketing
“I know when I come in, I can be my authentic self. I’m welcomed and valued for that. I can walk in the door and don’t have to be a different person. I can be who I am, and everyone respects and values me at ProductPlan. I can flourish and be happy and fulfilled because I can be myself at the end of the day. – Damon Navo – Customer Success
Final Thoughts on Fortune’s Great Places to Work
Being recognized as one of Fortune’s great places to work is a tremendous honor, especially in light of the challenges brought about over the past year. We also believe much of our success is still in front of us. We’re excited to continue our journey to help product organizations simplify the product life cycle and build organizational trust.
Check out our Careers Page if you are interested in a role at ProductPlan.
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Conduct Better Roadmap Communication with Shared Legends
You may have experienced issues when combining more than one roadmap into a single view. If so, you know how difficult it is to ensure that multiple product portfolio views have a standardized legend.
However, maintaining a consistent structure and vocabulary can improve a business’s ability to communicate strategic goals. The solution? We’ve added a new Shared Legends feature to the LIKE.TG roadmap app.
I spoke with hundreds of roadmap users at large organizations. They told me how challenging it is for admins to maintain workflows and standardize multiple roadmaps. The time investment to have each team member update and standardize their roadmaps was a burden for them.
Here are some of the most common challenges that may sound familiar to you. I’ll also explain how the Shared Legends feature can support better roadmap communications within your team.
3 Ways Shared Legends Can Help Improve Your Roadmap Communications
1. “I need to be able to lock down legends across roadmaps.”
One admin described the frustration of creating a legend and asking roadmap owners across the company to use it—only to find some were changing colors or modifying the text.
Using a consistent legend across roadmaps is essential for clear communication when accessing the portfolio view. If a company decides to use the legend to present strategic objectives, it doesn’t want roadmap editors to add new or modify labels. If an initiative doesn’t align with an existing strategic purpose, it probably shouldn’t be on the roadmap right now.
Solution: Admins are the only ones who can modify a shared legend.
Shared Legends allows admins to limit edit access. If editors use a shared legend for their roadmaps, they will have to use the legend labels and other details as-is, ensuring consistency across company roadmaps.
2. “We want to make a legend change once—not 30 times.”
As another LIKE.TG customer explains, “Following up one by one with 30 PMs isn’t scalable. When we make a change to the legend, we need that change to impact all roadmaps using that legend.”
When a product leader needs to make a small change to legend text or color before a big presentation, there are many roadmaps to update when they could be doing other things like preparing for the presentation itself.
Solution: Shared legend modifications are automatically reflected across all roadmaps using the legend.
When an admin updates a shared legend, that update will automatically populate across every roadmap using that shared legend.
3. “We need to make the portfolio view easier to configure and read.”
As a result, we built Shared Legends to address this common challenge that we heard from our enterprise customers. They have many active roadmaps at any given time that different owners manage. Admins at larger companies often find that creating a roadmap portfolio view requires manual work.
One product team labeled its development work with a blue bar and called it “Development” in the legend, and another assigned it red and called it “Dev team.” Merging these roadmaps would require the admin to review the details of both, reconcile the red-blue discrepancies, and then create a standard label for the development work, which could take hours.
Solution: Shared legend for portfolio views.
The admin can now use LIKE.TG’s Shared Legends feature to create a consistent legend convention for each roadmap and roll those roadmaps into a portfolio view requiring manual legend reconciliation.
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The New Shared Legends Feature in LIKE.TG’s Roadmap App in Action
Shared Legends automates the process of standardizing legends for the entire company. Here’s what it means for each type of roadmap user:
Admins can create a standard legend in the LIKE.TG roadmap app to make it accessible to roadmap owners across the company. If you’re an admin on your company’s roadmaps, this means you can create consistency and alignment on roadmaps across your company. Moreover, you won’t need to update every roadmap whenever your team makes a change manually.
Editors can apply the shared legend to their roadmaps, saving them time from creating their own and ensuring their legend reflects the vocabulary, color-coding, and other details agreed on by the company. If you’re an editor, this also means you can get up and running with a standardized legend quickly with the confidence that you’re adhering to best practices established by your team leads.
Viewers of the company’s roadmaps will have a consistent experience analyzing each project’s strategic goals and status on each roadmap. If you’re a viewer, this means you’ll be able to quickly understand any roadmap across your company because you’ll be familiar with the legend conventions.
Conduct Better Roadmap Communication with Shared Legends
The Shared Legends feature in LIKE.TG’s roadmap app is a first of its kind. When your team deploys this feature, your roadmap admins and editors will know that:
The terms used to describe your goals, priority levels, project status, and teams will always be consistent with other roadmaps across the company. (No more duplicate labels or confusion about terminology.)
The spelling, grammatical details, and color-coding of your roadmap legend will perfectly match the company’s different roadmaps. (No more manually fixing your labels to match other roadmaps before rolling into a portfolio view.)
The legend you create will merge seamlessly with the legends of your company’s other roadmaps when you combine them into a single view. (No more manual work to align legends when rolling roadmaps into a portfolio view.)
If you maintain several roadmaps or work on a team with many product managers, this will be a timesaving game-changer.
Try out shared legends today, and let me know what you think in the comments.
How to Retroactively Measure Product Vision Success
A 2020 study conducted by Clutch surveyed over 500 businesses. Only 5% of companies identified that they accomplished all their goals in the past fiscal year. Moreover, the survey results established that 65% of those businesses completed at least half of their goals. Clutch’s survey proves that you need an effective product management strategy to measure product vision success.
As a product leader, your product vision anchors everything you communicate to your team. The concept provides your organization with the ideal product.
First, you must realize you need to test your product vision before developing a product strategy. Much like the agile process, your picture gets better as you build, measure, and learn. As such, your product vision becomes the product narrative you, as a leader, tells.
While looking back at your vision, you’ll need to make sure your team remains proactive. Remember, your product vision may be an idea or an aspiration. To help your product team get there, you’ll need to learn from your actions.
You’ll need to put your head down to gather information and then sell the rest of the company on your vision. Your product vision reflects the big picture and helps you, your team, and your peers make long-term decisions. Your informed decision-making drives your culture and moves the business forward.
The vision may remain stagnant, though. Even after you write it, the product strategy needs to evolve. Adjustments lead to significant improvements.
The end of the fiscal year can provide your team with the time to adjust. Let’s talk about answering the question:
How did I do last year?
Product Vision Exists In The Work You’ve Done.
Metrics are crucial. When it comes to vision, you can’t count clicks.
That is where proxy metrics come in. Proxy metrics are variables that can help you understand something unobservable. So when it comes to vision or leadership, having great proxy metrics is essential.
Proxy metrics help you gain visibility into how you operationalize that vision. That’s where goal frameworks come into play.
Proxy metrics, even far removed from the leadership level, can give insight. Let’s take a goal framework and go a little deeper into what they can tell you, even if it’s four levels down.
Objective and Key Results (OKRs) are popular these days. When they work well, they function as an excellent proxy metric. Why? They can help a leader see how aligned the team is via something as simple as a spreadsheet.
A good question to ask here is, are the objectives you see aligned to that ideal vision?
If those objectives aren’t, there is no better time to think back to what caused the misalignment to the vision.
Did something change?
Are teams getting the correct information?
Do teams feel safe enough to ask questions?
All good things to think about as you judge how close you are to those product ideals: now, how about a particular measurement to keep alignment?
Tracking A North Star Metric Helps Tie Movement To Vision
Another tool to help set alignment is a north star metric. As John Cutler mentions on the blog, an effective north star metric keeps alignment. It’s important to remember the key characteristics of an influential North Star:
North star helps focus on customer value and the exchange of value. For example, daily active users (DAUs) don’t tell you anything about the value exchanged.
The metric represents your unique product strategy.
Moreover, it connects the customer value you are trying to create as a product team. The executive team cares about this connection the most.
As a north star becomes real, this is a great time to look at the initiatives to see if they moved your north star by looking at the significant projects shipped to see how they affected your north star.
Did you see spikes in your proxy metrics or North Star?
How about any dips?
Did you make any bets in your product strategy that would affect the North Star? How did those bets pan out?
Remember, things don’t always go to plan. The releases that happened during the year may have had an adverse effect. Ignore this at your peril.
Failures Are Essential, Too
Success is helpful for team morale. That said, analyzed failure is more beneficial for team growth.
Let’s be clear. Failure on its own isn’t helpful. Don’t fall into the trap of lionizing failure for the sake of loss. Spend time analyzing the failure so that teams can understand how to make better choices in the future and learn how to prioritize their time better around the demands of product planning.
Why? Product development doesn’t always go to plan. In fact, as a product leader, if things always went how you planned, you aren’t paid enough. Sometimes, taking a risk, or force de jour, bad things happen.
The bad news is failure doesn’t feel good. The good news is once you’ve had some time to recover, there are lessons in failure. Those lessons can help you and your team get even better the following year.
Embrace Your Product Failures
Write them down. Do not hide those failures. Failures come in different forms.
A quick note: it’s easy to point out the vast failures. The ones that create ripples in the organization are substantial to note. They are drama-filled, and your strategy may change forever. Make sure, though, that you capture the less noisy failures. These look different but can be as deadly long-term.
You need to judge features by the return on investment as much as the noise they create.
The project went “according to plan” yet didn’t make a splash in the marketplace. It’s a slack integration that didn’t move the north star. You invested in a product team for a quarter, and nothing changed.
These failures are silent at the moment but cost the company millions. But when you catch them, offer a great chance to look at the process.
The failure is an opportunity to look at your process:
Was our discovery process unclear?
Was this a me-too feature – something we saw our competitors do and copied?
Why was this prioritized?
Things don’t always go to plan. Your team will go through trials, and those trials are unavoidable. What separates the product visions that evolve from those that wither? Product teams use what they go through as fuel.As you judge the year, it’s a great time to look at those failures and see what you can learn. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"});
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Facing the Consequences of Your Product Vision Decision
Your failures, and successes, for that matter, don’t exist in a bubble. The company that supports your product vision is an organism. The organism adjusts to what happens.
After an event happens, something happens afterward. That “something” is a “second-order effect.”
Second-Order Effect refers to the idea that every action has a consequence. Then, each result has a result.
In other words, a single decision can start a series of cause-and-effect. The results can lead to shifts in culture.
There are bound to be shocking things, some of which felt “out of nowhere.” That is likely the second-order effect of an outcome.
Write those surprises, and like you did with team failures, investigate them.
Let’s take that Slack integration we talked about earlier. The feature had a specific purpose. But, the lack of impact could have had some downstream effects.
Was there a particular decision that led to a shift in something unrelated?
Did our communication patterns change?
Were there any culture changes that caught us by surprise?
Writing down what took the team by surprise can help you draw a map of those second-order effects. If you create clarity there, you can use them to fuel your growth into next year.
How to Utilize Customer Segmentation
You’ll find that the issues you have will not apply to everyone. When taking a look back at the year, it’s a tremendous opportunity to ask yourself the question:
Do we care about these people?
It doesn’t seem warm-hearted, but our vision can’t do everything for everyone. When teams spend time on customers that don’t fit with the business, they waste time.
When you build for someone you don’t intend to serve, you are stealing from valuable customers. Stealing time may seem harsh, but that is an outcome of a lack of focus.
So, who are your most important customers? Now is the time to take the time to talk to your team and look at the data:
What customers drive revenue?
Who are the customers that drive stickiness on the platform?
Of those customers, how happy are they?
Net Promoter Scores (NPS) are helpful here. NPS is a survey question that asks how likely you are to recommend this product on a scale of one to ten. The number has limited use, but it can signal the health of a segment in the total.
NPS is powerful when you segment your users.
If you segment your users, you have a great way to understand who likes your product and those who don’t. The promoters (9-10), like it, represent an opportunity to get case studies. The detractors (0-6) are the canary for potential issues.
They present themselves as opportunities to learn. Understanding what drives those users to that score will help strengthen the vision. There is also an opportunity to see what is impactful, especially as you get scores over time and see where the most significant shifts happen.Download Product Success Metrics ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '18f5a8aa-393b-4397-9fd4-f7758c1edf55', {"region":"na1"});
Themes and Trends for the Product Vision
When looking at all the data and segments, you are looking for themes. Vision isn’t about one change or another that works for lower-level strategy. You are looking to impact as large of a swath of your business as possible.
When you digest the data, you’ll want to take a step back. Let the data dance in your head for a while, and you’ll notice a few prominent themes.
Something else should come with those themes. The business isn’t stagnant, so the data you see will be moving. These are the shifts we mentioned earlier.
Combining both will give you something to communicate to the rest of the business. Themes are great to take back to the c-suite; it’s at a level you can discuss without getting too much into the weeds. It will color the business for them. The trends will give them the numbers to help you and the rest of the company to act.
If this sounds familiar, it should. Themes and trends are qual and quant working together. You need to sell the vision. Have solid and explicit themes and trends will help you do that.
As you take a look at the themes and trends, you’ll want to know the following:
Are these themes impactful?
Will they cover a material part of the business?
Are the trends clear?
Are they tied to metrics that are proxy metrics to the health of the company?
Do the themes and trends match?
We need to tell a story.
Looking at the changes for the year isn’t enough. You’ll need to tell a cohesive story to the product team and the rest of the business to sell your vision again.
Measure Product Vision with Your Product Roadmap
Product isn’t linear, and neither is our vision.
Your vision mustn’t become stale – business moves fast. As a product leader, you’ll need to ensure that you don’t make the mistake of assuming the vision is evident.
Taking the time to go over the last year is essential. You need to check in on the changes, north star, failures, and segments. It would be best to sell what you see to the rest of the business with themes and trends.
The end of the year provides an excellent time to reevaluate what your team has accomplished.
Your roadmap, driven by LIKE.TG, is a great way to tell the story. That is why it is best to support that roadmap with a vision to drive organizational change.
Remember, your vision is a tool to help people understand. Take the data from this research to find the connective tissue past the features and tell the story.
Your vision is the big picture, and taking time to reflect on reinforcing your product story is valuable. As a leader, it’s a skill that will be useful throughout your career.
So take advantage and set yourself up for looking forward over time. Get up and see the potential around the corner.
Discover what LIKE.TG has to offer. Then let your vision lead the way.
Effective Use of Product Roadmap Software to Align Your Product Strategy
Vital to delivering successful products at Clickatell, an effective product roadmap can quell the confusion and missteps that often derail well-meaning product delivery organizations. Roadmaps provide the required context to understand how individual initiatives combine to meet strategic objectives. They also paint a clear picture of how it all comes together.
An effective product roadmap lists the many deliverables and deadlines. However, most importantly, it tells a story. The roadmap guides and informs everyone involved with the product from ideation to market. Furthermore, the alignment creates a cohesive organization around the same core objectives.
Using Your Product Strategy and Product Vision to Plan Your Roadmap
Product strategies must be rooted in the overall vision of the company and product. This ensures organizational alignment and support. When each product initiative advances, the product vision is easy for everyone to be on board. Some product teams may find themselves challenged by the individual whims of sales staff, executives, or even their product managers.
The product roadmap then reflects that strategy. It illustrates the product team’s approach to making their product vision a reality. The linkage prevents the product from straying into uncertain territory. An effective product roadmap can provide your team with a mission and vision into actual functionality and deliverables.
Anything that doesn’t directly service the overall vision of the product roadmap needs reevaluation. Strategic and effective product roadmaps provide independent product managers and implementation teams time to focus on what really matters. They can then produce their desired outcomes. Teams can then ensure a product-led company arrives at the desired destination.
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The Product Roadmap’s Key Role in the “Triad”
Product management, product development, and user experience comprise the “triad.” Moreover, these disciplines are essential to delivering great products. Every organization strives to find the sweet spot for these collaborations. The results are products that delight customers while also solving their problems.
[Source for reference of the “triad”]
Product roadmaps serve as the golden thread that weaves these three disciplines together. When roadmaps align with the product strategy, all three key disciplines are working off the same plan. The alignment creates a secure buy-in from stakeholders regarding its contents’ viability, feasibility, and desirability. Moreover, it creates a true partnership that can’t reach a common goal without working in sync.
The Importance of Storytelling and the Roadmap’s Role
Humans respond much better to stories and narratives than bulleted lists of talking points. Positioning your product in terms of stories helps people communicate its value and helps keep all teams on message and consistent.
While the specifics may be highly dependent on the product’s and company’s maturity and scale, the logic and sequence of the roadmap’s contents should always make sense. I believe every product strategy needs a storyline and a timeline.
Product storyline
The storyline explains the “why,” typically presented verbally with a few slides to support the presentation. The timeline denotes the order, with sequences and key milestones best expressed in a visual roadmap created with purpose-built tools like ProductPlan.
Storylines introduce concepts and create consistent naming conventions that ensure everyone in the business can associate with. This narrative device provides input to concepts reflected in the roadmap. Storylines help underpin the product’s vision and mission.
A solid visual roadmap pulls the story together. It provides documentation of the narrative. The roadmap’s timeline can serve as a preview of how and when that story will expand and get even better over time.
6 Roadmapping Best Practices
Roadmap’s key value exists in sharing data in a digestible, consistent format. It serves as the record reference for anyone building, selling, supporting, or using the product. But the best roadmaps have a few key elements that increase their utility.
1.) Know your audience
Not every crowd wants or needs the same thing from a roadmap. The storyline and timeline should remain consistent. The level of detail and emphasis get tailored to different sets of stakeholders. So it puts the focus on what’s meaningful to them. Don’t make the rookie mistake of thinking the only audience that matters is product development or the C-suite.
2.) Choose an appropriate tool
Visual roadmaps are the best way to convey your product’s story. Don’t rely on tools that lack the flexibility and ease of use required to create a compelling visual roadmap. It will evolve as the product strategy matures and new features and functionality ship. Other teams would never settle for subpar tools, and neither should product management. Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint do many things well, but roadmapping isn’t one of them, and neither do a collaboration or issue tracking tools. Pick a purpose-built roadmapping tool.
3.) Static is for suckers
Roadmaps are living resources that demand regular updates. Create a cadence for updating and socializing the latest versions of the roadmap, so stakeholders expect and look forward to their natural evolution. Slide decks and screenshots don’t do roadmaps justice – rather, use a specialized and interactive tool put in the hands of competent roadmap owners to mitigate the danger of outdated documents remaining in circulation.
4.) Consistency is crucial
Regardless of how roadmaps get built in your organization, they should always look and read the same. Relying on templates, standard terminology, and consistent visual elements avoids stakeholders’ confusion and prevent product team members from reinventing the wheel. With a roadmap strategy guide, everyone can focus on the substance and less on the format.
5.) Take a portfolio approach
No roadmap is an island in organizations with multiple products and product lines. With a consistent approach, it’s easy to roll up various roadmaps for different products into a portfolio or master view. The portfolio approach creates a cohesive roadmap ecosystem, even with diverse global teams working on product strategy and execution. Project managers, developers, testers, sales, and marketing must make sense of each product, how they interact, and any interdependencies.
6.) Build for a remote and distributed world
Roadmaps provide a reference regardless of the location or time zone, especially in Agile environments where rapid iterations and learnings are the norms. Since far-flung teams get so few overlapping time slots when they can work together, roadmap consistency allows those meetings to be more productive and efficient, fostering increased collaboration.
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Make Roadmaps Work for You
Humans invented tools to accomplish more, not so they could spend their time fooling around with the tools. Product managers should view roadmaps as a valuable tool. They should invest enough time in them to maximize their benefits.
Product managers are the keepers of one of the most important artifacts in the entire company—the product roadmap. Understanding what roadmaps can do and continually improving and updating them makes them more helpful for challenging conversations and negotiations between product teams and stakeholders.
Roadmaps do well to limit noise and distractions. They focus on the core of the vision and leave the shiny objects on the sidelines. Consequently, they are the “chaos shield.” We all need to deliver value and delight to our customers while at the same time appeasing our internal stakeholders. Finally, their accuracy creates credibility, which will give them more utility moving forward.
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Employ an IMPACT Prioritization Strategy to Your Product
What drives product professionals? They are driven with a hyperfocus on doing things that matter. Product professionals talk to customers and stakeholders to understand what’s important to them. They unpack their pain points to get to the root cause. They know the importance of a prioritization strategy and seek out opportunities to improve upon it.
We conduct customer research and stakeholder alignment so we can figure out what matters. Then we identify what we can do in our products that make an impact, be it on the lives of our customers, the growth of the user base, or the bottom line of the business.
However, we usually have far more ideas and options than bandwidth and resources. Thus, we realize a real need for prioritization, ranking and sorting, and culling the list. We can then choose a few items worthy of making the product roadmap rise to the top.
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The Downsides of Prioritization Frameworks
Because a prioritization strategy is of crucial importance to any product’s success, many different methods exist. Dozens upon dozens of frameworks stand ready for product teams looking for a new way to figure out the best ideas to pursue first, from buy-a-feature to MoSCoW analysis.
These frameworks aim to maximize windows of opportunity and optimize product development. It’s a testament to just how tricky, and complex a prioritization strategy can be.
Not only do these frameworks have lots of different names and acronyms, but they also require varied inputs. Some rely heavily on customer surveys, while others need a well-structured strategy or clear key performance indicators (KPIs).
While these tools often help, there’s an inherent risk to them as well. Product managers may feel forced to ignore critical data points due to the limits of the overall framework.
Product managers face limits due to the lack of a solid strategy. Their strategy should align stakeholders on a consensus moving forward. That must be in place well before plugging numbers into a framework. How else can you assess the significance of any item on the business making progress toward its goals?
IMPACT sets the stage for better prioritization conversations, moving the team past the “why” and focusing on specific trade-offs and expected outcomes.
Watch our webinar on IMPACT:
Applying an IMPACT Prioritization Strategy
As I’ve covered in many other blog posts, webinars, and our free ebook, IMPACT is a mindset for ensuring you’re doing things that matter. And there’s no domain where that matters more than prioritization.
So let’s run through the six elements of IMPACT and see how they relate to this essential aspect of product management:
Interesting
Not all problems are created equal. Framing and Context provide stakeholders with an idea of how pressing the issue is. Product management must act as a storyteller to engage their colleagues instead of just giving a dry recounting of the facts.
Folks get excited and influence how things get ranked. At this stage, the solution must take a backseat to the prevalence and significance of the problem.
Meaningful
The problems you opt to solve must both move the business forward and provide customer value. You can’t do either without an agreed-upon vision and strategy as well as a quantifiable benefit to the customer.
People
The focus must remain squarely on the customers, in this case, how many benefits and how significant is the improvement, which creates an apples-to-apples comparison and shifts distractions and edge cases to the parking lot.
Actionable
Prioritization must consider the realistic chances of solving the problem. Putting something impossible at the top of the queue—despite its possible value—wastes everyone’s time. That requires a little homework with engineering to consider feasibility and level of effort to ensure a balance between resource allocation and weight.
Clear
It’s tough to consider and adequately rank potential development items without a comprehensive understanding of the problem. Don’t prioritize things until the research is complete and the ideal solution is already in hand.
Testable
How will you validate that each prioritized item worked once it ships? Without a measurable definition of success, no one knows if it was worth it or if similar projects warrant resource allocation in the future.
Did you solve the problem? Is the value clear to end-users and prospects? User feedback confirms those assumptions—or sends you back to the drawing board—so the sooner they chime in, the better.
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An IMPACT Prioritization Strategy in Action
For an additional lens incorporating IMPACT into a prioritization strategy, you can rank each item being considered based on the six tenets of IMPACT. For each of those six pillars, the team can rate each item on a five-point scale.
When evaluating a potential development item for “People,” for example, it might look like this:
1 – This only helps a minimal number of users in our target market.
3 – This allows lots of users with a particular characteristic/within a specific market segment.
5 – Everyone reaps significant benefits, and it expands the pool of potential customers.
Each item’s IMPACT is an objective countermeasure to the inertia that plague prioritization. The goal is to make the most of each development cycle, and the work with the most significant IMPACT is the work worth doing first.
To learn more about how IMPACT can influence this and other aspects of product management, download the free ebook today!
Finding Your True Career IMPACT Within the Product Field
Product professionals get paid to manage products and services. Delighting customers and creating innovative solutions for their problems dictates our priorities. But this single-minded focus on helping others often leads to a lack of focus on ourselves and our career impact in the product field.
And, unlike our products, no one’s getting paid to manage our careers on our behalf. Without intentional and thoughtful strategizing, years and decades can roll by, shifting and stalking our career trajectories while we worry about the success of others.
Applying the IMPACT mindset to your career can help keep that career impact trajectory on track by ensuring each move you make gets you closer to where you want to go.
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Being a Selfless Generalist is a Good Thing
A selfless approach based on customer empathy and satisfying stakeholders is an asset on the job, but less so for ourselves. We suffer from imposter syndrome and deprecate our value because, as generalists, we don’t command the same respect and awe as our more specialized coworkers.
But our selfless generalist approach is a superpower in its own right. Seeing the big-picture vision and possessing versatility enables product managers to impact, even when the spotlight falls on others instead. We check our egos at the door because the job demands it, and we don’t want a blindspot to punish the customers we care about.
Though it may not grab as many headlines or turn us into “influencers” in our respective industries, it builds the proper habits and work ethic to succeed in our current roles… and our next ones. Unfortunately, this means a scant opportunity to promote ourselves leads to personal “brands” that seldom extend beyond our companies’ walls (physical or virtual). Thus comes fewer opportunities to be “discovered” or headhunted or recruited as we continue operating backstage and behind the scenes.
Variety is the Spice of Life and the Bane of Product Management Careers
Anyone in product for a few years quickly notices no fixed definition of product management from one company to another. Some view Product as an equal peer to Marketing, Sales, and Engineering, while others tuck it away under a VP of Product Marketing or a CTO.
One organization may crown us “CEO of the Product” while another views us as an annoying check on runaway innovation. There appears to be a lack of shared understanding of what Product has to offer and why it’s so necessary. But the net result is seemingly random locations on organization charts, daily duties that differ significantly from one company to another, and product managers hailing from many walks of life.
The diversity presents challenges when attempting to:
Identify growth opportunities and spot which areas you must improve upon.
Translate a written job description into what it would mean for your career aspirations and how it maps to your current experience.
Tailor your resume, cover letter, and personal pitch to fit a particular job opportunity.
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Putting IMPACT to work for your career
The IMPACT approach can help you optimize your career impact by assessing yourself in order to improve your career prospects and how you position yourself when you’re actually on the hunt for a new gig.
Optimize yourself with IMPACT
Whether you’re desperate to change companies, are angling for a promotion, or want to be the best you can be, IMPACT provides a structure for identifying your strengths and weaknesses while identifying areas to work on.
Interesting
Product managers need an exciting story. How you got to your current role, the career path you took, and where you’d like to go are essential to shaping how others view you. Resumes list the jobs, the degrees, and a few details in bullet points but don’t always recount a compelling story.
In a vacuum, your resume or LinkedIn profile might leave people with more questions than answers:
Why did you leave Microsoft for some startup that failed?
Why did you quit your job at a unicorn and throw in with a medium-sized firm?
What made you stay at the same company in the same role for six years?
How come you were once a Director, but now you’re a Senior PM?
Why did you bounce around between product marketing and product management?
To you, those moves all make sense, given the full context of your life and career. But job titles alone don’t do your narrative justice, ergo the need for a story that weaves them together. Connect the dots, find themes and common threads, and spin a tale that leaves others wondering what the next chapter holds in store.
Meaningful
Product managers do a lot of different things, many of them decidedly necessary. Listing out your responsibilities conveys competence with these tasks and obligations but camouflages your most impactful work.
Why you did those things and how you prioritized them is far more relevant. What did those accomplishments mean to you? To your company? To your users and customers?
When reviewing your experience, the emphasis must be on how they solved pain points and helped the company reach its overall impact goals.
People
A product manager’s relationships and interactions with coworkers are fundamental to their success. Those soft skills may not be measurable, but they are essential traits of your current future employer’s values.
Are you a good teammate that people enjoy working with? Do you make life easier and better for your colleagues? Are you a great mentor or a devoted protégé?
Those skills also come into play when interacting with customers. Can you speak in a language they understand and connect with them where they’re at? Can you engage them in deeper conversations to uncover the root issues and not just the surface-level gripes and wish lists?
Talent, intelligence, and creativity aren’t enough for a successful run in Product. You need to be a people person, too.
Actionable
When listing accomplishments, it’s important to deviate from the laundry-list approach and instead emphasize anecdotes or success stories where you either took action or set the stage for stakeholders to do so. You need to explain beyond merely discussing the completion of a task and what you did with the results.
You didn’t just “survey users,” you used that survey data to make recommendations, and one of those recommendations improved a KPI or led to a big deal, which better illustrates the meaningful impact of those actions, not that you just took them.
Clear
Keep things short and sweet while focusing on real-world examples of how your accomplishments made an impact. Showing off your skills and touting what they’ve done for you in the past are both keys to convincing folks you’re worth adding to their team.
Did you bridge gaps and build consensus by creating clarity among stakeholders. Have you inspired the masses with your oratorical prowess? Did you slice and dice the data and create dazzling visuals or unignorable metrics that won people over?
Testable
The dull, repeatable, everyday elements of your job aren’t the best measures of your competency. You need to get uncomfortable in an unfamiliar situation before knowing if you’re up to the challenge.
Push yourself to try new things, learn new skills, and dive into new areas of interest. Measure your faculty with this new material and see if you’ve got the resilience to power through when things get tricky.
Watch the full webinar below:
Putting IMPACT Into Action On a Job Hunt
With your elevator pitch nailed, the next part of advancing your career is assessing new opportunities. Once again, IMPACT can help by weeding out postings that won’t be a great fit while zeroing in on the good ones.
Job descriptions aren’t just ads; they’re problem statements you’ve yet to unpack.
What problem is this company trying to solve?
Where can someone add value and make an impact?
Are they mentioning customers and data?
Which verbs do they use?
Are they super specific in what they’re looking for or searching for an athlete to grow into the position and evolve with it over time?
Of course, what they say they want isn’t always what they need (or want), but it is a sneak preview of how they view product management today. It might be wrong and negotiable, but it provides a good glimpse of their current mindset.
With this as a starting point—and the remainder of the interviewing process as a series of additional opportunities for further digging—you can better ascertain the expectations for the role, your fit for the opportunity, and whether it will provide you with enough chances to make a true career impact. You want a job where you’re motivated to succeed, not just happy to collect the paycheck.
A Position with Purpose
The product offers us the opportunities to change lives, fuel businesses, and transform organizations. The problems we solve may be trivial or life-changing, but they all have the chance to impact our product’s users and customers.
Finding impactful opportunities throughout our career means more than just a job we enjoy or a product we’re passionate about. It gives our entire lives purpose and adds to the story of our career, adding new chapters with every step we take.
To learn more about how IMPACT can help with your career and other dimensions of product management, download the free ebook today.
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5 Ways LIKE.TG Helps Standardize Your Roadmaps
Sometimes you don’t know you have a problem until something breaks. Young companies are often scrappy by design. Their product teams are small and agile. Perhaps the team consists of a few product managers. These professionals can easily communicate, stay aligned, and present a cohesive product strategy to the team. Many teams fail to understand the importance of a roadmap. They fail to understand how it can help standardize and align their team.
The scrappy methods that worked in the past can lead to inconsistency and disorganization as the company scales. There are more features to build, more roadmaps to maintain, and more stakeholders to satisfy. Without standardized processes to maintain uniformity, tiny inconsistencies in how each product manager approaches their work are magnified over time. This results in miscommunication, redundant work, and errors.
Whether you’re a product manager or a product operations person for a large enterprise organization, we want to help you. Our roadmap software can help you create streamlined processes that scale along with your company. Our roadmaps can improve efficiency, reduce redundant work, and establish best practices. Here are five ways LIKE.TG helps you and your product team standardize roadmaps.
Create a Roadmapping Process that Grows as You Grow
Adopting roadmapping software alone goes a long way toward establishing the organization-wide processes that allow your team to scale. Without a tool built for roadmapping specifically, many product managers rely on square-peg, round-hole solutions. For example, spreadsheets and slide decks, neither of which make it easy to maintain uniformity.
Product roadmaps should be consistent in the way they present information. They can be pretty complex, packing tons of data into a visual format that spans months. Moreover, roadmaps illustrate various work across teams. To make sense of this information, a viewer needs to know where to look. They need to know what the colors on the roadmap mean and how roadmap lanes get organized.
They also need to know that the roadmap they’re viewing isn’t outdated.
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Choosing the right tool
Tools like Excel and Powerpoint open the door for too much variability when creating a roadmap. These tools fail to build effective roadmaps, so product managers must customize them to work for their needs.
It’s a minefield of possibility that’s difficult to reign in as your organization grows. The style and structure of your roadmaps evolve organically in different directions and become challenging to comprehend and combine. Coupled with the lack of version control, and your roadmap process becomes a roadmap mess.
Using native roadmap software, like LIKE.TG, provides immediate structure to how your team roadmaps. Think of a roadmapping tool as a pre-built foundation and frame. The frame gives your roadmaps reliability and strength while also still leaving room for customization and creativity. By adopting a roadmapping tool, your roadmaps will all live in a single space. They will follow a consistent style and structure.
Standardize the Style and Structure of Your Roadmaps
Roadmap legends help you visually communicate strategic goals. With just a pop of color, you can organize your roadmap by initiatives that increase customer satisfaction. You can create more revenue opportunities or enhance your product’s performance.
It can be difficult to keep these legends uniform when you have a team of product managers who each create and maintain their own roadmaps. If every roadmap uses a different visual vocabulary for communicating the same information, the result is a set of roadmaps that require time and energy to learn to read, and worse, can’t be compared or combined into a high-level portfolio view without a lot of work to remedy inconsistencies.
Many of our customers have felt this pain firsthand. It’s why we built Shared Legends, a way for you to standardize the style and structure of your roadmaps.
With Shared Legends, you can create a centrally managed legend that can apply to any existing roadmap with just a few clicks. Rather than developing legends themselves, your product team can easily follow best practices and use the legends agreed upon by your organization.
Even better, you only need to update your shared legend once to cascade that update to every other roadmap using that legend. Instead of hounding your product team to make the same update countless times, you can rest assured that everyone on the team is following best practices and using the same legend.
Standardize the Information Included in Your Roadmap Details
You don’t want to create consistency in the style and structure of your roadmaps. You also want to predict the kinds of information people can expect to find when they go to your roadmap with questions.
Within the details of every roadmap bar, we provide a space for you to include additional information to help roadmap viewers understand “what” the product team is building and why they’re building it, who they’re building it for, and other essential information.
If left to their own devices, product managers will likely provide the information they deem most relevant. They perceive this through the information they care about the most. On the other hand, they can determine by asking themselves the questions they’ve most often received from others. Either way, it’s unlikely that the information provided within each initiative will be the same across your team. Product managers need to find a way to properly align expectations.
Custom Fields
With LIKE.TG’s custom fields, you can designate a space for the information you want your product team to include on every roadmap bar. Maybe your team needs to keep track of the success metrics tied to each initiative. Or perhaps your senior leaders want to see the budget allocated for each priority.
Rather than answer these questions individually over and over, you can direct team members to your roadmap and allow it to speak for you. Over time, team members will build a habit of checking the roadmap first rather than interrupting work. The assurance will provide you and your team with more time to focus on strategic initiatives, speaking with customers, launching new products, exploring new market opportunities. The freed-up time will allow product managers to work on addressing things that need quick prioritization.
Standardize How Your Team Decides What to Build Next
Prioritization can be a painstaking process. There are so many inputs to consider, from a mountain of customer feedback to features that your executive team believes will drive the business forward to your ideas around what innovations could attract entire markets of new customers.
Without an agreed-upon way to decide what to build next, it’s easy to fall into the trap of reacting to what others ask for rather than what your product strategy dictates. It’s even easier for each product manager on your team to prioritize something different based on their assessment of what’s essential and what’s not.
We want to help you bring standardization to how you prioritize roadmap initiatives. The LIKE.TG prioritization board allows your team to objectively score opportunities based on a customizable set of benefit and cost categories.
Maybe your company has a business goal to increase revenue from a particular segment of customers. With the prioritization board, you can easily include that consideration as a benefit. You can then customize how to compare to other initiatives and consider how they might factor into deprioritization. For example, operational costs or the amount of development work required can also add to your prioritization framework as a cost.
The prioritization board helps your product managers stay laser-focused on your company’s most important priorities. It also provides new product managers on your team with an accessible template for learning what should be top-of-mind considerations when deciding what to build next.
Standardize Your Roadmap to Communicate with Different Audiences
LIKE.TG’s tags are an easy way to categorize and filter your roadmap based on custom information. Indeed, not every initiative on a roadmap will be relevant to every kind of audience.
Tags aren’t helpful if they aren’t implemented consistently across your various roadmaps.
Tags highlight particular stories about your product strategy. For example, your customer success team might want to know which features support a specific set of customers. Your marketing team may need a release overview for August so they can plan their go-to-market strategy. Tags add these additional details to your roadmap and then filter your roadmaps by this information.
Unfortunately, without standardizing how your team uses them, tags can quickly become a source of disorganization and confusion. In an attempt to create an August release overview, your product team might unintentionally create multiple variations of the same tag. Some roadmap items might be tagged with “Aug” while others tagged with “August Release.” Anyone who wants to see an overview of everything releasing in August will need to be aware of these variations.
Centralized Tag Manager
You should be able to keep your tags organized and avoid redundancy, confusion, and error. If you’re a Professional or Enterprise customer, we provide you with a place to do this. We call our centralized tag manager.
With the LIKE.TG tag manager, you can easily manage the tags used to highlight product owners, dependencies, release statuses, and more. The manager defines which tags pertain to which kinds of information, merge similar tags to avoid confusion, and deletes any tag your team shouldn’t use.
It may sound obvious, but making it easy for your audience to access the information most relevant to them is critical in keeping your team aligned, delivery schedules on time, and your roadmaps in use. Without a way to readily view this information, many will either rely on inefficient methods of getting the information they need – like asking the same questions of your product team over and over again – or move forward in ignorance. Neither of these outcomes is acceptable, especially as your organization scales.
Streamline Your Product Roadmap
Ultimately, roadmaps that have a standardized style and structure communicate information in the same way. They use a common vocabulary to express goals, identify priorities, highlight dependencies, and more. When you take the time to create consistent processes for building and maintaining your roadmaps, you reduce the cognitive load these tasks require. The freed-up time allows your team to focus on more important things, like speaking with customers, drilling into market research, and otherwise working on ways to improve your product.
It’s important to understand that standardization is an investment. It requires more work upfront to create less work overall over time. Unfortunately, many organizations realize the need for standardization too late, often when existing processes break down as the organization scales.
With LIKE.TG’s roadmapping platform, you can create a foundation of guidelines that build consistency and predictability within your organization over time. Our suite of standardization features ensures your roadmaps are produced by the best practices you’ve established, making it easy for your team to stay aligned, work efficiently, and gather the information they need to be better at their jobs.
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Your Product Team’s Communication is Making or Breaking Your Product
Effective product team communication is not about talking to your team more often or providing them with more granular tasks. You want to make sure your team understands why what they’re doing matters.
As a product manager, you need to create an atmosphere that keeps the lines of communication open. Not just from you to your team, but from them to you, and to each other. You also want to communicate not only your tactical requirements but the strategy and vision for the product.
Why Poor Product Team Communication Can Kill Your Product
Industry surveys reveal that product managers view communication skills as the most important.
In our most recent annual survey—The 2021 State of Product Management Report—we found that product professionals rate communication #2 on the list of skills they believe their coworkers lack most.
And don’t assume this means product managers let themselves off the hook when it comes to their communication abilities. More than half of our 2021 survey respondents admitted they have room to improve. The improvement came in their process of articulating strategy to their product team.
What is this data telling us? Product professionals understand that clear, effective, and frequent communication among their team can affect whether a product succeeds or fails in the market.
But what does that mean? Simply stating the abstract phrase, “We need to improve product team communication,” doesn’t illustrate the problem clearly. So, let’s talk specifics.
When your product team is not communicating effectively that miscommunication can derail your product.
1. Your development team might take away the wrong success criteria.
You can generate what feels like consensus in a meeting with your cross-functional team. Everyone on the team might nod their heads as you say: “We want to create an intuitive, streamlined experience that solves the XYZ problem for our user persona. In actuality, everyone might have a different understanding of what to prioritize first. Moreover, this may affect how your team builds out the functionality.
2. Your marketing team might develop the wrong messages for your user persona.
Your marketing team might hear your goal to solve the XYZ problem, but do they know why it’s a problem worth solving? Do they know your target user or buyer—what that person needs, wants, fears?
You want your marketing coworkers to understand your product and customer so well that they feel enthusiastic as they develop your product’s marketing messages and campaigns.
That can’t happen if you don’t regularly communicate with your marketing team, show them the market data you’ve compiled, encourage them to sit in on your developers’ demos, etc.
Without that deeper understanding, your marketing team will parrot the terms and phrases you’ve given them. That’s no way to unlock their expertise and develop the most compelling messages possible.
3. Your sales team might focus on benefits that don’t resonate with prospects.
You can hand your sales department a bunch of collateral when the product is ready for launch: demo videos, slideshows, sales sheets, prospect emails.
But will that be enough to turn your reps into an army of enthusiastic, knowledgeable advocates for the product? Almost certainly not.
If you want your sales team to have a deep understanding of the product they’re offering—and the customer they’re offering it to—you need to give them enough of a sense of your product’s value that they become evangelists for it.
4. You might not hear that your development team isn’t equipped to realize your vision.
Remember, product team communication needs to go in every direction. That means you need to be listening to your coworkers and hearing what they’re telling you.
If you’re not willing or able to do this, you could build your entire plan around a development team trying to let you know they don’t have the resources, skillset, budget, or understanding to deliver what you want.
The team might not want to disappoint you, so they offer noncommittal responses to your feature requests and timeline. And if you’re not truly listening, you might miss those signals.
For these reasons—and a thousand more like them—you need to prioritize clear and open communication among your product team. Now let me give you a few tips for incorporating this strategy into your process.
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5 Ways a Great Product Manager Creates Effective Product Team Communication
1. Answering questions around priorities.
As you begin to translate your high-level product vision into a strategic action plan, you can expect to hear questions, concerns, and challenges from your cross-functional team. Your action plan will require work from them, of course, and they might have questions about what should come first.
A great product manager is ready for these challenges with evidence, strategic reasoning, and, above all, patience.
Every question you hear from your cross-functional team consists of two parts—the spoken question and the unspoken “why” behind it.
Pro tip: Start your answer by providing the why behind the question and see if your team can get to your answer before you reveal it to them.
2. Explaining the product story.
Well-told stories are memorable and influential. That’s why we still remember fairy tales and parables we heard in childhood.
A great product manager can turn the details of a product concept into a story that’s clear, engaging, and fun to hear. A compelling product story can make it easier for your team to communicate the product’s value to each other—because they remember the story.
Imagine: You’re trying to develop a financial app to let parents give teenagers an allowance and monitor their spending habits. Rather than start by telling your cross-functional team all about the product’s features or what types of coding the app will need, you can give everyone a brief story:
“Charlie’s parents are done handing him cash every week, asking him a few days later what he’s done with the money and hearing, ‘I forgot.’” Our app is going to put Charlie’s spending on the grid. We’re going to relieve mom and dad of the head-bashing frustration of trying to decide every week whether to send Charlie’s allowance into a black hole. We’re going to help these well-meaning parents give their son some independence… with limits.”
Everyone on the team can now keep this memorable story as a reference while working on the product. If the product team gets stuck or confused, the team can ask themselves, “Is this going to help us help parents give their teenage kids independence and financial limits?”
3. Listening to the team.
Great product managers don’t just talk. They listen.
As I noted above, listening means paying attention not only to what your team is saying but the implications behind it.
If your developers ask why you have prioritized an initiative, they ask because they don’t understand its strategic value? Or is it because they don’t think they can complete the project but are uncomfortable saying so? Is there a different reason altogether?
When you receive questions or challenges from members of your team, you should not assume you’ve effectively resolved the issue just because you’ve answered. You also need to make sure your coworkers understand your reasoning and agree to whatever you’re asking of them.
Every person on your cross-functional team comes to their work from a unique perspective, with a fantastic set of skills and hopes, and challenges. They all have something valuable to contribute to your product’s success—even if it’s something you’d rather not hear, such as a warning about resource levels or your timeline. The only way to give your product the best chance of success is to listen to your team’s unique insights.
4. Staying available and accessible.
Fortunately, we’re in the digital and mobile era. Staying accessible to your product team is easier than it’s ever been. You can set up Slack channels or an MS Teams environment to chat with your team anytime.
Great product managers make themselves approachable to their cross-functional team, and they respond to questions and requests with enthusiasm and a positive attitude.
You don’t need a 24-hour policy where you promise to answer any text within 15 minutes. But you do want to send your coworkers the signal that you welcome their feedback and questions throughout the product development process.
5. Sharing a clear, up-to-date roadmap.
Finally, a great product manager builds and shares a roadmap that answers the team’s strategic questions.
For a product manager, this means including, wherever possible, your strategic reasoning alongside every theme and epic you add to your roadmap. Suppose your sales team popped open your roadmap and saw that your next priority was to develop an Android version of your app. Could they also know the evidence for why you chose that as the product’s following significant enhancement?
As you can see from the above LIKE.TG screenshot, you can quickly drop in a note about why you’ve decided to work on each item on the roadmap with our app.
This is another reason to use a purpose-built roadmap app instead of building out your product roadmap in a spreadsheet. All the extraordinary product managers are doing it these days.
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Building a Team of Effective Product Managers (and a Path to Product Leadership)
I hope you’ve found my reasoning for effective product team communication persuasive and that my suggestions can help you get there. But I want to leave you with one more thought.
As a product leader for years and a product manager for years before that, I can tell you from firsthand experience that building a solid communication foundation for your team can also create direct benefits for your career.
First—and this is true primarily with larger companies—you’ll be building a model for the other product managers in your organization to follow. And there’s a good chance your company’s executive staff will notice what you’re creating as well. They’ll want the great chemistry, the positive team conversations, the good outcomes that they see happening with your cross-functional product team.
A second related benefit: When you’ve demonstrated that you can build a streamlined product team where everyone is speaking the same language, you’ll be adding a solid skill to your arsenal, one that often leads to product leadership.
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Lead with Context, Not Control
Acquiring a consensus on product direction remains the number one challenge for product professionals, according to LIKE.TG’s 2021 State of Product Management Annual Report. The art of product leader communication relies on the concept of responsibility without authority. Product managers who follow this concept understand the responsibility to influence others to achieve the organization’s product goals.
The dynamic turns upside down as we progress through our careers and establish ourselves as product leaders. As product managers, we have the power to task others with responsibilities. We need to convince stakeholders in other departments to buy into strategies and get things done.
The responsibility of managing a product team gives us a type of control that we’re not used to. We can give orders and hold people accountable, and we also have the authority to assign our direct reports with tasks.
But should we treat our direct reports differently than our other coworkers and colleagues? Should we skip the niceties and consensus building within our own teams just because we can?
Product Manager’s Control of Employee Expectations
With your team, no one can stop you from giving orders and micromanaging staff. As a product manager, implementing an effective product strategy should remain a priority. Though you may have authority, it remains crucial that you wield this power responsibly.
Remember your time as a junior team member or individual contributor. The product managers who provided clarity around expectations and responsibilities empowered their employees. In contrast, those who failed to exude product leader communication let their product team down. As a junior product team member, what you were looking for was the “why.” The “why” provided you the context to think and act strategically versus tactically. Now that the roles have switched, you want to set up your product team for success, by developing your own product leader communication strategies.
By leading with context versus control, you position yourself to empower your staff to complete their tasks and reach their objectives. Autonomy provides employees with the freedom to solve problems and accomplish tasks utilizing their processes.
You likely hired your team members because you believed they had a good head on their shoulders and the ability to fulfill the job responsibilities. After they get fully onboarded, you can tap into those abilities.
When you grant your employees some level of autonomy, you convey to them that they have your trust. Trust can go a long way towards mitigating any cases of imposter syndrome and boosting employee confidence.
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Leading with context instead of control.
Product managers who provide context instead of control open up the possibilities of potential solutions. If you’re always offering basic action plans, you’re limiting your product team’s creativity. When you close off avenues that might be worth exploring, you ultimately miss out on opportunities that can lead to a better product.
Finally, leading with context means you create alignment within your own team. You must ensure that you provide consistent messaging to external stakeholders. As a united front, you can then start tackling product initiatives. Your product team needs to understand the rationale and motivations for these initiatives and decisions.
Plenty of opportunities exist to lead your team. By empowering them with knowledge, you refrain from bogging them down with directives.
Recognizing the 0pportunities to lead your team.
For example, let’s say you have a disgruntled customer bugging you to add a new feature. The request falls within the domain of an associate product manager. You could use a command approach: (1.) directing them to write up user stories based on sales team and customer services notes. (2.) Follow up to make sure it gets prioritized.
In contrast, the alternative approach calls for you to lead with context. To achieve this, you can tell the associate PM that a particular customer may need more attention than a returning customer. You need to emphasize that they should do some research to understand the customer’s true pain points. The overall goal to solve and recommend one or more solutions permits them to do some real product management work.
The customer’s request for a feature may relate to a symptom of a whole other issue, such as a lack of training. An effective product professional understands a small tweak takes less time than weeks of work. These revelations wouldn’t happen if you simply handed down a direct order from a project manager to an associate PM.
Likewise, you can also be less prescriptive with how junior team members spend their time by emphasizing context over control. Moreover, you can provide them with adequate context to make those decisions for themselves.
Utilizing metrics to measure success.
In addition, product managers—who understand the metrics used to define and gauge success—can identify the gaps themselves and add value where they see opportunity. It puts the onus on them to consult with colleagues to see where they might need some extra help. Moreover, they can review the overall situation and identify the areas that require an active owner.
If you take a holistic approach, junior staff can see the big picture and their contributions for maximum impact. While this may be too much leeway for newly hired staff, a solid contributor should quickly discern where they can do the most good.
Setting the Stage for Successful Context-Based Leadership
Context-driven management requires two key ingredients—clarity and communication. As any veteran product leader knows, there’s no better tool to facilitate that than the product roadmap.
A theme-based roadmap articulates the initiatives that need prioritization. Roadmaps can also convey the intended outcomes, objectives, and goals the plan expects to achieve. An effective product roadmap can align stakeholders and provide an appropriate framework for managing your team.
With a firm understanding of the roadmap, the entire product team operates from the same foundation by utilizing product software to remain in sync. In addition, the roadmap acts as a starting point where any decisions or conversations can provide context for the team.
Product managers may have a hard time loosening the reins. For this reason, product managers need to develop their product leader communication skills. Frequent check-ins and updates can ease the discomfort you may have with letting go of some of that control. In addition, if the guidance fails to provide them enough context, you can ask them questions before they jump back.
Creating an environment where the product team remains steeped in context ensures that the product team does not lose the product narrative. The entire team can play a role by remaining curious and seeking advice.
Spend Time on What Matters Most
We know from our 2021 State of Product Management report that product managers dislike mitigating issues through a reactive process instead of implementing a strategic process. Context-driven leadership can change that dynamic by forcing even the most junior members of the product team to think strategically.
This mindset can also inform your hiring strategies as well. Leading with context only works when you have staff members capable of synthesizing information and making sound choices independently and not just blindly following detailed instructions.
You may feel uncomfortable giving up control, but part of your job responsibility includes letting your team blossom and maximizing their potential. This concept mirrors the same basic tenet that underlies the entire Agile framework, where developers mitigate problems by developing solutions. Plus, it will give you more time to focus on strategic thinking, which 96% of product leaders say they don’t have enough time for.
Thinking Beyond Roadmapping to Elevate and Revolutionize Product Organizations
At LIKE.TG, we have the tremendous privilege of working with and listening to tens of thousands of product leaders. Our customers span across thousands of organizations ranging from smaller, growth-stage startups to Fortune 500 global enterprises. This vantage point has helped us better understand what communication strategies work best. Moreover, we understand why companies face alignment issues, and why products fail to live up to expectations.
In particular, we’ve observed customers struggling to democratize access to the artifacts insights that inform prioritization and go-to-market. The roadmap can serve as an organizational blueprint that binds strategy and execution. To assure product success, product organizations need to ensure the entirety of the organization is informed, aligned, and accountable.
Whether that means automating time-consuming approval processes, creating a central repository for go-to-market artifacts, or providing more meaningful analytics on product progress, LIKE.TG’s product operations platform will help organizations orchestrate their entire product strategy.
Change is Afoot
Many of our customers are in the midst of rapid change. For some customers, this change may be rebalancing how collaboration happens with an increasingly remote workforce. Others are witnessing larger-scale changes to their business model as buying behaviors shift in response to current macroeconomic or other factors.
Product-led growth (PLG) companies are becoming increasingly commonplace as PLG unlocks distribution advantages that can lower acquisition costs and improve the consumer purchasing experience in b2c and b2b businesses. Gartner reported that 85% of organizations surveyed had adopted or intended to adopt a product-centric delivery model.
The proliferation of software tooling to support data analytics, user research, and design, among other areas, has never been more accessible for product teams. While these tools often solve acute problems for their purpose, data managed within these tools can remain siloed, adding further complexity to the product organization. This ‘swivel chair process problem’ keeps product organizations from elevating critical strategic perspectives to the broader organization. LIKE.TG helps stitch together this siloed data to create a more unified view of the product story.
Tool proliferation is one of the reasons companies are introducing Product Operations into their organizations. The emergence of Revenue and Sales Operations disciplines and platforms such as Salesforce.com, which enabled organizations to improve transparency, alignment, and operational rigor, serve as a potential analog for what lies in store for Product. We view ourselves as a close product partner to this emerging discipline.
Embracing digital transformation
Finally, incumbents within industries such as financial services and healthcare that tend to embrace change more slowly are in the midst of a significant digital transformation as the competitive landscape shifts around them. Our SVP of Engineering, Mark Barbir, recently wrote about Implementing a Successful Product Transformation Strategy addressing digital transformation among other topics in case you are interested in learning more.
Elevating The Product Organization
All of these changes have accelerated the demand for product managers. Our 2021 State of Product Management Annual Report noted that interest in product management has doubled in the last five years. We also see an increase in product operations evidenced by LinkedIn’s recent assertion that the job skill of product operations has increased by 80% within the past year.
Despite these changes, many product teams still use slide decks or spreadsheets to communicate their roadmap strategy. They’re sharing information without context that no one can ‘double-click’ into to learn more. As a result, product managers spend too much time answering low-value questions from stakeholders. 60% of product managers say they spend most of their time updating teams internally, according to our 2021 State of Product Management Annual Report.
Yet strong alignment among Product, engineering, and the entirety of the go-to-market function is pivotal in delivering positive outcomes. Marketing needs to understand more about the persona or segment targeted. Sales want customer stories and the latest slide deck. Executives want to understand the KPIs and other metrics that will determine success. The product organization has the potential to be the heart of this insight connecting the broader team more closely to the product strategy to unlock crisper execution.
We believe the companies that can successfully elevate the product organization to the heart of strategy execution will be the most equipped to disrupt the future. The change will require executives across the organization to think differently about the role of Product within the company. Many product leaders may feel powerless to initiate systemic changes. However, we are here to partner in this revolution.
The Secret to Product Planning
The secret to product planning starts with “why.” In some cases, product planning focuses on what we’re building, completing, and what’s up next. The rationale for all that activity isn’t simply to cross things off the list or pump out new functionality. It’s about turning a vision into reality.
But connecting the dots between the activities of a particular product development team and the overarching corporate vision can be a bit of a stretch for those not steeped in the strategic exercises occurring at the top of the organization. How a particular widget maps back to a vision of “transforming the world of peer-to-peer finance” or “unlocking the potential of idle computing power” or whatever can be a heavy lift. To unlock the secret to product planning, product professionals need to develop a clear product vision.
Putting Vision into Context
In an ideal world, everyone should understand the organization’s overall vision. It’s beneficial to take a top-down approach. Breaking that vision down into smaller pieces becomes more relevant to different parts of the business. It’s not always easy to map the contents of an individual sprint. However, a high-level strategy for an entire company remains possible.
The significance of each element of the strategy increases stakeholder alignment. Alignment creates motivation and enthusiasm amongst the teams. They can now realize how their contributions impact the big picture. This increased fidelity must begin at the planning stages, creating the platform for ongoing alignment and teamwork.
At LIKE.TG, each engineering team has a vision. That aligns with the product vision, which in turn aligns with the company vision. Though there is no one secret to product planning, this concept comes close. It enables engineering teams to understand how the world looks different if they’re successful.
Planning for Outcomes While Preserving Accountability
Each squad understands its purpose and objectives. The squads remain grounded on a shared understanding of what success looks like to them. Boiling down grand sweeping statements and visions to something tangible is key to bridging that gap.
Each member should answer the question: “What will our customers be able to do tomorrow that they can’t do today?” This very concrete, specific ideal guides their actions without being too prescriptive.
For example, it might be that customers can now automate more of their daily updates. The update doesn’t spell out precisely what that might look like or how it will get built. However, the vision is crystal clear. The product manager can then fill in more details. Consequently, delivering value is more important than a list of features.
That value must also be measurable to ensure the team achieves its goal of executing its vision. Alignment around how we know our customers’ lives got better is just as crucial as intending to improve things. That shared definition of success keeps everyone pointed in the same direction. Moreover, it creates a benchmark for ongoing, measurable refinement.
Finding the Sweet Spot
While strategic thinking and keeping everything in perspective are product managers’ strong suits, that’s not always the forte for everyone in the organization. They may not have the impetus or motivation to do so, and they may also lack the information and context even if they did.
Therefore it’s up to product managers to determine the right level of vision required to give everyone enough autonomy to move forward without overwhelming them. This task only becomes more difficult as the scale of the vision expands thanks to growth.
Creating a shared vision
For example, at LIKE.TG, our vision is to help companies accelerate product outcomes.
By presenting a shared vision and securing buy-in, the product calibrates the squad to be on the same page. Presenting roadmaps tailored to the audience in question provides a helpful resource to paint this picture as well.
That’s why we keep narrowing things down. We know this team in particular’s contribution to accelerating product outcomes centers on collaboration within the application. We briefly explain how collaboration contributes to the vision, giving product development further insight into the purpose of their work and not just the “what.”
Shrinking the view and scope of things isn’t typically how the product discusses vision, but departing from grand narratives and concentrating on specifics is what the implementation teams need to succeed. Like with IMPACT, it conveys what’s meaningful about the work, giving the team a better picture of how their individual and team efforts plug into the larger strategic objectives and customer experience. It turns abstract platitudes into concrete action plans and tasks.
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Planning for the Future Without Becoming a Feature Factory
Company missions rarely change. Visions for the business typically extend five or ten years into the future. And strategies tend to cover the next year or two. Things get more specific the closer they are to the present.
But while missions and visions are vague, strategies and roadmaps tend to get more detailed out of necessity. Things can’t remain fuzzy once it’s time to build stuff, and that granularity helps teams plan accordingly and deliver functionality that adds customer value.
However, one shouldn’t confuse increased specificity with rigidity. The secret to product planning is to remain vision-driven and customer-centric. Product teams should stay flexible at every stage of the product planning process. Our product vision gets more precise as we continually learn more about our customers, their needs, and the overall market dynamics.
That’s where a roadmap based on themes versus specific features comes in. We’re all aligned about what areas we’re focusing on and our goals for each effort, but there’s still plenty of wiggle room on the details right up until implementation kicks off.
Maintaining Excitement and Energy.
Building products is still a job, and work remains an obligation versus a choice for most. However, imbuing the team with a sense of purpose can elevate the team above the daily grind and get them pumped up for what they can achieve.
By continuing to build what customers need and not just the promises in an outdated vision, strategy, or roadmap, we keep that joy of delighting customers close to the surface. We know we’re prioritizing what matters and spending our cycles on enhancements to the product experience that genuinely make a positive difference. And we won’t just build things because months or years ago, we happened to say we would.
The process only works well with the suitable structures in place. A foundation built on increasingly relevant visions grounds the work in its purpose. Visual roadmaps tie each project, task, and sprint back to each level.
This transparency builds trust and alignment while leaving room for flexibility as situations change and conditions evolve. It doesn’t happen overnight, and each stakeholder might warm up and embrace this approach on their timeline. By creating a solid understanding of the process and delivering a relevant vision for each team member, the team has established a product plan everyone can get behind. The secret to product planning will continuously evolve.
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The Critical Importance of Finding Time for Strategic Thinking and Planning
In our 2021 State of Product Management report, 97% of senior leaders said being strategic is the most important thing for their organization’s success. But at the same time, 96% of those same leaders say they don’t have the time for strategic thinking and planning. So why is it so difficult to find time for strategic thinking and planning?
I threw this question to the crowd in a LinkedIn post and received some surprising and insightful responses.
Time Management
Time management remains an essential theme for product teams because there aren’t enough hours in the day. Strategic thinking and planning tend to fall to the sideline for other pressing needs.
One possible solution is “outsourcing” some strategic thinking to junior staff members before passing it onto senior management to make the final call.
“I think they don’t have the time to do so,” said associate product manager Evelyn EBO. “Hence the need to have young and innovative minds who follow the trends of the industry to come up with these strategic thoughts while the senior leaders review and align it with the organization’s business goals.”
Strategic thinking and planning may require some intentionality, but there are plenty of ways to work them into the rhythms and schedule of a product team, such as working on it as a team, carving out some “alone time” to focus on a deep dive, or holding an off-site session. It all starts with a commitment from leadership that strategic thinking and planning are worth the time and makes it a core tenet of the team’s approach.
Prioritizing Quick Wins
Nearly every product has a backlog of great ideas, and customers continually generate additional requests and wish lists. The backlog creates excessive pressure to deliver value and appease the “squeaky wheels” as quickly as possible.
That low-hanging fruit is so darn appealing because it’s an easy win. It offers minimal effort and rapid rewards. But just like junk food is initially filling and satisfying without providing a ton of nutritional value, constantly front-loading your development queue with these “quick wins.”
A feature-factory mindset means you’ll never get around to the complex, important work until it’s reached a crisis point. Moreover, the most critical projects may not cover every use case and contingency due to poor planning.
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Turning an Abstract Concept Into Practice
Another common thread is the difficulty some product leaders and organizations have grappling with something as broad and malleable as “strategy.” Some teams have trouble defining the specific tactical actions required to work on a product strategy, and they sometimes struggle to define “strategy” in the first place.
“It can be difficult since ‘strategy’ is an abstract concept – at least for me,” said program manager Michael C’deBaca. “I’ve found it’s better first to define strategy. Here’s my take (not my idea, picked it up somewhere along the line): it’s identifying and quantifying business problems in the area of interest; deciding which problems to address; putting people, processes, and technology in place to execute the decisions; evaluating/measuring the execution; and finally acting on the evaluation/measurements. For me, this breaks down the abstract concept into smaller, and hopefully easier-to-work-on, pieces.”
Brant Cooper, an author, founder, and CEO, thinks a misunderstanding of strategic thinking even plagues many industries.
“I don’t think people even know what they mean by ‘strategic.’ It’s maybe worse management speak than ‘innovation,’” Cooper said. “Management consulting firms hire 20-something-year-olds to help with corporate strategy. I mean, really? I think they mean they wish they were more proactive. But they are reactive, go to too many meetings, fighting fires, pulling hair out, etc.”
Regardless of who does the upfront work, the product strategy must ultimately be aligned with stakeholders from across the organization and imbued in every product element, particularly the product roadmap. Strategy becomes the guiding principle for the team when you have company-wide support and align objectives.
Strategic Thinking and Planning Shouldn’t Require All of Your Time
Another take is that “being strategic” shouldn’t be a dedicated activity product leaders need to find time for… because they should already be doing it at all times!
With a top-down strategy in place, ensuring each tactical decision and minor task are all done with the overall strategy in mind is far more accessible. A solid strategic foundation prevents you from retrofitting existing structures and plans to a newly developed approach.
A sound strategy ensures a net positive outcome on your team’s goals, objectives, and overall vision. The vision remains the focus at all times, so it never requires any “extra effort.”
Stick to the Essentials of Strategic Thinking and Planning
Product managers and leaders never lack things to do. Our plates are always overflowing, and there’s inevitably another hat someone is desperate for us to wear. To break free of this neverending cycle, we must pare things back and do less overall, while ensuring what we are doing is truly important.
With an emphasis on strategic thinking and planning, we can focus our attention on what matters. To achieve this, we must learn how to say no. We must understand which product enhancements and features don’t support our strategy. Furthermore, we must also learn to say no to tactical activities that waste time.
Therefore, you must realize that you can’t do everything. Free yourselves and manifest the strategic thinker and planner customers want. Our products don’t need every bell and whistle. Moreover, it’s not practical to go to every meeting and read every customer support inquiry.
Using a strategic imperative as our guide, we can carve out the hours required to establish strategic thinking and planning. There will always be details to attend to, but you can’t let that get you distracted from your true objectives.
For more insights on how to become an essentialist product manager, download my free book here.
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How to Handle Resistance to Change Management
If you’re responsible for change management at your company, you have my respect. My sympathies, too. Because the resistance to change management can be difficult. People find it easy, even fun, to envision a great outcome. But the resistance to change management can negatively affect this excitement.
So, in this post, let’s talk through the common reasons businesses face resistance to change. When you understand and recognize these reasons, you position yourself to address and overcome them. Then I’ll offer a few suggestions for a successful change management process.
Why You’ll Encounter Resistance to Change (and You Will, Every Time)
1. People are often unaware that their daily actions conflict with their aspirations.
I once worked for a CEO who liked to describe our company as product-team driven. He truly believed he’d built an organization that empowered the product department to lead the strategy.
But in practice, that wasn’t the case. The CEO set all priorities and approved or rejected all product ideas. When the product team came up with viable concepts and produced evidence that these products could succeed in the market, the CEO often said no, ending the project.
If someone had proposed a plan to shift the company culture to be more product-team-led, the CEO would have rejected that idea as well. His resistance would have stemmed from the fact that he believed we already had a product-driven company.
One reason you might face resistance to change is that your team believes—or at least wants to imagine—that they have already adopted the new framework you’re suggesting. “Hey, we’re already a customer-centric business.”
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2. Inertia is a powerful driver of human behavior.
When you present a plan for digital transformation or some other company-wide change, many people’s first instinct will be to feel threatened or worried. Their second instinct will be to push back against your plan.
Everyone has routines and processes that make them feel comfortable. With your sweeping change proposal, you’ll be asking them to give up some or even most of these routines. Additionally, some people on your team could worry that they will have a diminished role under your new framework. Others might have the opposite concern: that they will have to take on more work and responsibility.
Often the resistance you will face in your change management efforts will have nothing to do with the merits of the approach or framework you’re proposing. It will simply be the result of your team’s fear of shifting to a new process in which they might not be as needed or successful.
3. People might not realize what they’re committing to when they sign on for the change.
Let’s say you persuade your company to make a change. You begin rolling out the new processes. For a time, everyone seems to be adjusting smoothly. But then something happens. A reality sets in that your team hadn’t physiologically prepared for.
Here’s what that might look like under a couple of real-world examples.
Transform Your Organization from Traditional Marketing to Product-Led Growth
Sure, your stakeholders might have found this idea exciting in principle. It sounded great: Let’s be like Slack and make a free version of our product so compelling that people can’t help but share it and market it for us. We can even cut down on our paid marketing campaigns.
But then the first month passes, and your paid signup rate is down. That was part of your product-led growth model, and everyone agreed in theory. But experiencing a month of lower-than-normal revenue could make your executives panic. Will they demand the company reactivate its costly marketing campaigns to generate immediate revenue?
Transform Your Product Development Process from Waterfall to Agile
Changing your company’s development approach from waterfall to agile might be a wise strategic decision. And at first, you might find a lot of enthusiasm across the company. In the abstract, saying “We’re an agile shop” will probably sound appealing to your stakeholders.
But let’s do another thought experiment. Imagine your company has made this transformation its official policy, and your cross-functional team is about to begin work on a new product, with natural resources and budget on the line.
Will your development team panic at the idea of starting their work without a complete vision of the full-featured product?
Does your executive team be willing to greenlight a new product without a firm market launch date?
Will your product team have the discipline to turn down stories that aren’t ready for development in their weekly sprint planning?
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Resistance to Change Is Part of Human Nature
As I hoped I’d communicated, resistance to change often stems from our hardwiring.
In some cases, you’ll have trouble earning buy-in for a transformation because your coworkers envision themselves as having already made the change. In other cases, they’ll push back because they feel more comfortable with a legacy approach or worry about their fate under new conditions. Sometimes, your team will agree to the change first but then abandon it when it leads to challenges.
Bottom line: Do not expect to pull off a company change with zero pushback. Dealing with resistance is part of the change management process.
But you can reduce this resistance and earn more trust and enthusiasm for your plan by following some best practices. I’ve outlined them below.
6 Steps to Successful Change Management
1. Present the potential benefits to your stakeholders.
Before you describe how much work the transformation will require, you should explain to your team why it will be worth the effort. Keep your description of the upside anchored to reality but let your enthusiasm for the new framework show. If you’re going to earn buy-in for the change, you’ll need your team to be enthusiastic about it.
2. Explain honestly the effort needed to make the change happen.
Everyone needs to know upfront what they’re getting into when they sign on to your proposed transformation. That will minimize the culture shock your company experiences as people run into the inevitable bumps along the way.
If you’re proposing a shift from waterfall to agile, what if anything is agile about your current practices? If your processes are entirely waterfall, you need to explain the significant adjustment this represents for everyone involved.
3. Let your team know what success will look like.
One common reason employees resist proposals for change is that the process seems endless. Your stakeholders could legitimately worry about you following them around forever, saying: “Can we make this process more agile?” “How can we make that routine more agile?”
A key to earning stakeholder buy-in for your plan is to give everyone a picture of what it will look like when they’ve completed the change. That will provide them with something tangible. It will also counter the fear they have in their minds that they’ll never get done once they start this process.
4. Evangelize the change throughout the process.
Every change implementation faces setbacks and frustrations. As the driver behind this change management effort, an essential part of your role will be to continually serve as the plan’s advocate and champion. You’re there to remind your coworkers that the struggles they’re experiencing during the change will pay off when the company becomes more vital, more competitive, more profitable, etc.
You might have this conversation dozens of times with different stakeholders. Heck, you might have to evangelize to the same stakeholders repeatedly. Some people will need more convincing, more pep talks to keep them on track. That’s okay. Bring the same level of enthusiasm and confidence to your evangelizing every time.
5. Establish celebratory milestones along the way.
You’ve shown your team the end state of your transformation. They have a picture of the finish line. Still, many of them will experience change fatigue at different points in the process.
One way to counter this is to create internal victories to celebrate throughout the process. Send out positive updates when the company achieves a milestone along the way—schedule parties for internal accomplishments throughout the transformation. Give out awards to stakeholders: Maybe honor an “Agile Hero of the Week” for your agile transformation.
6. Remain resilient.
Essential stakeholders may tire of the changes you plan to implement. It is also important to note that you may also get fatigued from changes.
As your coworkers push back against the change or show signs of frustration with it, you’re going to be tempted to throw up your hands and revert to the old process.
This is where you need to remain resilient, remind yourself about the strategic benefits of implementing this change and maybe even evangelize the plan for yourself.
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The Essentialist’s Way to Building Better Products
“Am I working on the right things?”
“How can I fit it all in?”
I find myself asking these questions almost daily, both in my personal and professional life. How can I spend my time working on the things that matter most?
Even with the world in upheaval and our shift to distributed work, these questions are still top of my mind. With my trips, events, and other plans postponed for now, there are so many other things that can potentially fill up my time in this time of uncertainty.
Many of us live our lives doing 100 things at the same time. Trying to please everyone. Trying to do it all. I certainly have fallen into this camp. As a result, we scatter our energy and don’t make significant, meaningful, or satisfying progress on any of those 100 things.
Recently, I really enjoyed reading the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown and gave a talk about the essentialism concepts internally at ProductPlan. I highly recommend it for product leaders and anyone who aspires to make the biggest possible contribution to their work and life.
If I could summarize this book in one sentence it would be:
“Less but better.”
Now, if there’s a single statement for product managers to live by, that would be it.
I’ve often thought that product leaders can learn lessons about building better products from the methods we use to prioritize our personal life. So let’s look at the concept of “essentialism.”
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A Quick Primer on Essentialism
According to the book, an “essentialist” is someone who lives by design, not by default. An essentialist isn’t reactive, but rather makes choices deliberately by separating the vital few from the trivial many.
Essentialism is an approach for determining where your highest value is, and then executing on it—to the exclusion of many other activities. An essentialist says “No” a lot.
According to McKeown, essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done.
Does that sound a lot like what product managers do every day as we prioritize what to build?
An essentialist says, “I choose to work on only a few things that really matter.” By carefully choosing these few things that matter (for our products and our lives), we can make great leaps forward. Moreover, we’ll live a life that feels in control and one that matters.
The “Non-essentialist” Product Manager
According to McKeown, there are ways that a “non-essentialist” thinks. As I read the book, I found several parallels to ineffective product management. Here are a few patterns that might represent “non-essential” thinking by product managers:
“It’s all-important.” A non-essentialist product manager will try to be all things to all people. They will struggle to fit it all in – all the meetings, feeling like they are responsible for everything. They are the product expert with all the answers, and no decisions can be made without their input.
“More.” A non-essentialist product manager will focus on “more.” It’s undisciplined and reactive. More features to beat the competition. More saying “yes” without thinking first. Or saying Yes because it’s the easier path. What’s the harm of fitting in one more user story?
“Are we working on the right things?” A non-essentialist product manager, because they take on too much, will often feel out of control. They’re unsure if they’re working on the right things, and as a result, will ultimately feel overwhelmed and unsatisfied.
If any of those statements sound familiar, that’s OK. We all fall into that trap occasionally. All of us that are building products, will at some point feel or exhibit these patterns.
Yet there are ways of thinking and organizing our days so we don’t get to that point—after all, don’t we all want a sense of purpose, ease, and satisfaction in our work?
The Mindset of the Essentialist Product Manager
How can you foster the mindset of an essentialist product manager to avoid those traps? Here are four lessons I took away from the book that you can apply to your personal and product life.
1. Create space for thinking.
For most product managers, our days are filled with video meetings, calls, writing emails, writing stories, interruptions on Slack, and so on. With the recent switch to distributed work, we have been given this opportunity to create time in our day for strategic and creative thinking without the constant interruptions.
What would that look like? An essentialist creates time in their day for insights and contemplation, rather than putting out fires all day.
This process also applies to our working space. Many of us are now working from home—is your space one where you can focus? Is it pleasant to be in? Since you might be spending about one-third of your day there, why not make it one that inspires you to think creatively? For me, taking a break during my day for outside time (a walk, run, or even a stroll in my backyard) is a great way to process what to work on next.
2. Define your product’s purpose.
When was the last time you thought through your product’s purpose and mission? The OKRs you’ve been managing? How is your product differentiated from the competition? What is your product best at, and how can you double down on that?
With so much economic disruption, you can no longer take it for granted that your product’s vision and mission will be the correct one going forward.
Now is a time of reset for reflection on those things. What you (and your team) decide will set the stage for which initiatives are the most important things that you choose to work on next.
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3. Implement the minimum product.
This is the opposite of the “it’s all-important” mentality. I’ve written a lot about the minimum viable product (or the minimum sellable product) that provides value to customers. Now is the time to take that philosophy to heart.
I recently wrote about decluttering your product backlog. Revisit those epics in your backlog and scale those back. What will give your customers the most value with 50% of the effort you previously estimated?
4. Pause. Say No.
A non-essentialist product manager will pause before eventually saying “Yes.” An essentialist says “No” a lot, focusing on the vital few. Product managers will need to do this with empathy and reasoned explanations about why the answer is No (or “not yet”).
Additionally, it’s not only about saying “No” to feature requests. But rather, not committing to projects and decisions that do not lead you towards the greater goal. By saying No, and having a well thought out justification, you will foster more respect among your peers, stakeholders, and customers. Help them understand what the tradeoffs are. What will they (or the company) be giving up if you choose one path versus another?
If you have items in your product backlog that you now realize you won’t get to within the next six months, that’s probably a sign that you’re committing to too much. Likewise, if your day is back-to-back meetings, perhaps you can review your schedule next week and opt-out of a few.
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Takeaways—Claim Back Your Time.
These are only a few ways that product teams and entrepreneurs can introduce an essentialist mentality into their day. In talking with other startup founders and product leaders I often hear the challenges of “not enough time” as a common refrain.
Perhaps with essentialism, we can claim back that time, work on what matters, and make better products as a result.
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Benefits of Roadmap Metrics
A tool is only helpful if people are using it. We’ve all got exercise equipment, cooking gadgets, or crafting supplies lying in corners and closets collecting dust and good intentions. There’s nothing wrong with those items, but they’re also not adding any value while they sit idle. Understanding the benefits of roadmap metrics can help align your product team. For this reason, tracking whether or not your roadmaps are being used can help guide your product team towards a shared vision.
Roadmaps add value when used regularly by coworkers and other stakeholders. But once you email or Slack a document, you have no idea if anyone even opened it a single time. The lack of visibility may have you wondering if anyone actually referred to it. There’s simply no way to measure, leaving you with doubts and uncertainty.
When the Ideal Meets Reality
Roadmaps intend to create and reinforce alignment across the organization. They give everyone a clear view of the direction of the product or project. They connect to the key themes, strategic goals, and intended outcomes of those efforts.
In a perfect world, individuals reviewing and referencing roadmaps would happen all the time. Roadmaps would be part of everyone’s daily or weekly routines. Yet far too often, roadmaps are glanced at briefly. Sometimes they may get ignored until an issue forces a second look.
If people aren’t looking at your roadmaps regularly and using them to guide their own work, they aren’t living up to their full potential. Even worse, some stakeholders might still be viewing old and outdated roadmaps without realizing it, making their plans based on false information.
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Solving a Pervasive Problem
Using a purpose-built, cloud-based roadmapping tool such as LIKE.TG alleviates many of these issues. For one thing, as long as people are using the web viewer to see your roadmaps, you’ll know they’re always looking at the latest version.
Beyond this critical version control advantage, these tools can also provide product managers, scrum masters, project managers, and other roadmap authors with additional insights. We want to help you treat your roadmaps as a product. That means understanding if and how people are engaging with them. This is why we built roadmap Activity Metrics, so you can now see exactly how often your individuals view your roadmap each week.
Putting Roadmap Activity Metrics into Action
With this data, you’ll have a much better sense of whether your roadmaps are collecting digital dust or accessed regularly. Product Ops and project managers can track roadmap activity metrics just like other KPIs and metrics.
After an update is shared and communicated, roadmap authors can eyeball these metrics to ensure a corresponding spike in views occurred. If not, they’ll know they need to use other vehicles to prompt this action, from leveraging a company all-hands meeting to other tactics specifically tailored to engage critical stakeholders.
Additionally, roadmap owners can pursue a different course of action if roadmap activity metrics indicate that views are too low in between announced updates. Initiating open, frank discussions with various stakeholders and colleagues, you can investigate why they’re not viewing your roadmap more often.
Analyzing roadmap metrics may reveal a host of unknowns, from a general lack of awareness to missing information and context. These unknowns make the roadmap valuable to your product team and stakeholders. If the latter scenario turns out to be the case, you can create custom views of the roadmap for each of these audiences, ensuring it has the most relevant information.
Analyzing roadmap activity metrics can help you manage your product team better. By seeing the number of individuals who view your roadmap, you’ll be able to jump in and coach your team to socialize the roadmap’s contents and value better. It may also be an early indicator that their roadmap is flawed or missing something.
Another Measure of Success
Every business has many ways to measure its overall success, from revenues and profits to usage, adoption, and churn. But our internal processes don’t always have as many data points to track and put to use.
Your roadmap metrics deserve a spot on your organization’s Product Ops dashboard. These artifacts are too essential to ignore. Roadmap authors now have the power to evaluate their utilization and effectiveness.
Learn more about how roadmap activity metrics work in LIKE.TG or schedule a full demo today!
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The 7 Ts of Product-Led Transformation
Transformation is a word that isn’t commonly favored by the Product community because Transformation Programs rarely allow Product Teams to autonomously decide how they’ll achieve their mission.However, Transformation Programs incur significant costs. According to the CIO magazine, Global spending on digital transformation technologies and services was $1.3 trillion in 2020 of which 70% of that spend is wasted. That is approximately $900 billion.Why Product Managers Should care?Great Product Management can, without a doubt do better with the $900 billion squandered on Transformation Programs.Great Product Management can apply the Transformation spend more effectively by creating desirable and valuable products for customers. Great Product Management can deliver a higher return on the companies Transformation investment.Download The Essentialist Product Manager ➜hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'be753440-dc4d-40c5-9808-cad744d00a28', {"region":"na1"});Why be Product-Led?Product-Led Transformation is more holistic than other Transformations because it begins with the customer.The outcome of a Product-Led Transformation is a company that is aligned first and foremost towards discovering and quantifying customer problems before designing solutions.Product-Led Transformation re-focuses the company on the fundamentals of real value creation while embracing the benefits of the faster engines that Digital and Agile practices deliver.What are the 7-Ts of Product-Led Transformation?The 7-Ts of Product-Led Transformation is a comprehensive framework using modern Product Management concepts and techniques.It embraces both the functional aspects of delivering and scaling products as well as the adaptive capabilities required to evolve mindsets and behaviours in companies.The 7Ts isn’t a simple checklist but is intended to facilitate deep thought and action. They have been developed to ignite our thinking and to ensure that Product concepts and principles are included in any type of change process.The 7 Ts of are: Triggers | Tactics | Timeline | Talent | Tell Tales | Transition | Truths1 – TriggersHow do we take action from the definitive market signals that require the organisation to transform its current way of operating?Transformation is a necessary process in all organisations because technology and marketplaces are moving at an ever-increasing pace. It is no surprise that organisations have to keep up or perish.As Product People, our role is to pay attention to internal and external triggers that may disrupt the way our organisation competes. More often than not, there are multiple triggers that indicate that we need to make a change in the way we interact and deliver value to the market.As Product People, once we’ve identified the triggers, we have to deliberately prepare our response with a Portfolio or Product Vision and an implementable strategy, in order to galvanise the organisation with a convincing purpose for the necessary changes.2 – TacticsHow can we imagine success, and participate in the design of the Transformation plan with a strategic focus on being Product-Led?Every Product-Led Transformation Program requires a tactical plan outlining discrete steps and actions that will enable the team to achieve a ‘Target State’.In the case of a Product-Led Transformation, the ‘Target State’ must be aligned to the Portfolio or Product Vision; specifically how the organisation will change the way it orchestrates Product discovery, delivery and growth.When the Program is completed, a Product-Led organisation is resourced appropriately with the skills and capacity to deliver the Portfolio or Product Vision, processes and systems support not hinder Product teams, teams keep a watchful eye on the customer and the market so that they can continuously make and deliver appropriate enhancements and products, and more importantly, the organisation is steeped in its belief and support of good Product Management.3 – TimelineHow can you craft a timeline with achievable milestones and metrics to measure and guide the team to success?It is difficult not to consider transformation as a large, onerous project. The word “transformation” itself suggests that a significant effect is going to be needed.But, the Product-Led Transformation approach should be an experimental, iterative, meaningful course of action, leading towards a lasting, impactful way of operating.Transformation does not need to be a big project but it does need to make a big impact (and rightly so).Engineering the timeline for a Product-Led Program should reduce the change fatigue that often sets in during any large change initiative. Embedding the concept of adaptability and accomplishments through experiments and celebratory milestones should keep the program energized.Change is uncomfortable and for most people, threatening, but for change to occur, there needs to be a sense of urgency to propel people to transition from their current state to a new, better way of operating.We need to apply positive pressure and that according to Kotter, requires CEOs to communicate the vision by a factor of ten.hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '527dc6af-8860-436f-9ca6-ae2b71b0cc99', {"region":"na1"});4 – TalentHow do we know when to course-correct during the Program?It’s fair to say that we don’t have perfect information during the Transformation planning process and we’ll need to change our approach during the Program. To do so, we’ll need to recognise the signs that the Program is off track.There are 2 key ways to determine if or when the Program is off track.You’ll want to look out for signals from the team and review the Program’s milestones regularly. The team’s behavior and how they express themselves is key indicator if the Program is progressing well. If folks in the organization are continuing to demand that features be added to the Roadmap, you know that the Program needs rescuing.Missing a key or several key milestones is another tell-tale that the Transformation Program is struggling to deliver its intended outcomes.5 – Tell TalesHow can you seek out, lean on and learn from Product People that have successfully navigate their Transformation mishaps?Tell Tales is the learning component of the Transformation Program.In reality, we all know that Tactical Plans change. Especially if we experiment and execute the tasks and activities in functioning environments. make every effort to corroborate our plans and investment made in the planning process.One way to reduce the risk of failure is to create and run an “Outreach Plan” to learn from other organisations. The aim should be to help key stakeholders in your organisation to have realistic expectations about transformation and the process of transforming.The old adage ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’ really applies when the organisation is embarking on a transformation program. It is without a doubt, a significant expenditure and while mishaps will occur, we should try to avoid failure if possible.6 – TransitionHow can you highlight and zealously communicate the Transformation Transition period to your Product Teams to maintain their drive and commitment?Change is perhaps the hardest part of any transformation program. Like all journeys, all programs begin with anticipation and a flurry of activity, but after a few heady weeks, it can feel like nothing has happened.Unfortunately, the change process itself takes time. Important changes generally cannot be completed overnight. This means that the deliverables and the long-term benefits described in the transformation program may not be evident for quite some time.While the program Timeline and the Tell Tales outcomes can be used to educate people in the organisation about the transformation plan and potential pitfalls, during the transition period ongoing, visible internal publicity is required.Keep in mind and plan for the fact that the transition period requires significant, ongoing conversations and presentations to drive the organisation towards its Target State, and to maintain alignment.7 – TruthsHow can you explain the difference to your peers that Product-Led Transformation delivers broader, more beneficial outcomes than an Agile or Digital Transformation alone?The cost of not being one is too great as markets are hyper-competitive and aggressive. Economies are global and companies these days work broader, safer, better, and faster to deliver targeted products that solve specific customer problems.A product-led organisation will have teams that make independent decisions within the organisation’s strategic agenda and are able to identify and develop products that deliver optimal value for its customers and benefits for the organisation.Arriving at this destination is worth the effort because as Product People we are able to most effectively meet our promises to our customers.The 7Ts of Product-Led Transformation is an opportunity to view Transformation through a different lens, one that more holistically involves a key function in the organisation, the Product Management function. Activate your Product Management function as a growth engine, rather than treating it as a Delivery arm of the organisation.Attend LTP DIGITAL 2022 | USA to delve into The 7 Ts of Product-Led Transformation on March 9th, 2022.
