My Vision for Product Teams

Issue No. 15

I hope this week's episode finds you well. I don't know about you, but it's been a busy few weeks on my end. I can imagine it has been the same for you. Sorry for the radio silence, I've had to skip a few weeks where I didn't manage to publish a post.

This week I'm following up my "Manifesto for Building High Performing Cross-Functional Teams" with a post where I try to describe what these teams look like in a great product organisation.

A Vision for Product Teams

I tried to capture what great product teams are like in one sentence:

Engaged product teams continuously creating impactful outcomes by learning and making decisions through their weekly interactions with users

Let me try to break this down.

Engaged

Team members believe in and feel energised by the mission and vision of their organisation.

They feel their work directly impacts the mission of their organisation.

Folks enjoy the work they do and the colleagues they work with.

People have fun together!

Product teams

The organisation comprises smaller cross-functional teams who build a product or a clearly defined part of it.

I prefer to call these "Product Teams" because they make a product together.

Product managers, designers, and engineers work alongside supporting roles such as researchers, test automation and docs.

Each team has the skills needed inside the team to build their product autonomously with as few dependencies as possible on other teams.

Continuously creating impactful outcomes

These teams aim to deliver a continuous flow of value to their users which creates impactful outcomes for them.

Thanks to Josh Seiden and his book “Outcomes Over Output: Why customer behavior is the key metric for business success” I see an outcome as a change in users' behaviour that has a direct impact on the top and bottom line of an organisation's results.

Learning and making decisions through their weekly interactions with users

All teams need to make decisions every day.

The best teams are teams where everyone is learning and growing. How do they do that? By creating a safe space for making decisions and reviewing the results.

The best teams talk and interact with their users weekly because they aim to make decisions based on as much user input as possible.

If a team is only talking and interacting with users every month then they will end up making a month's worth of decisions without user input.

That is all for this week folks, have a great week!

Jeremy (he/him)

Don't ignore your dreams, don't work too much, say what you think, cultivate friendships, and be happy.

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