(2017-05-31) Torres Managing Product Teams For Success

Teresa Torres: Managing Product Teams for Success - Product Talk

*I’ve been thinking about the challenges of managing product teams by outcomes.

Most leaders want their teams to have the autonomy to go after an outcome, but they struggle with trusting that their teams will do the right things.*

The Power of Managing Product Teams by Outcomes

But many teams are reluctant to communicate progress because their decisions get nit-picked.

And this is what my answer looks like.

Negotiating Desired Outcomes

Let’s walk through it step by step.

two-way negotiation between leadership and the product team

if the product team is going to initiate the conversation, they need to be trained on how to set appropriate outcomes for a given time period

Good Discovery & Delivery Starts With Good Habits

The most important habits I like to see are a regular cadence of customer interviews, prototype tests, and assumption tests.

I love it when a team does all three every week

If you want to see a great example of an aggressive cadence, watch this video.

I also like to see a regular cadence of zooming out to make sure there’s clarity around the big picture—this might entail a map the challenge exercise or revisiting the opportunity solution tree.

Charting the Uncertainty of Product Discovery

But it’s not just about activities. I know plenty of teams that do all the right research activities, but these activities don’t influence their product decisions.

ultimately, the manager should give feedback, not dictate

Prioritizing Delivery

Management should primarily focus their feedback on the discovery roadmap, not the delivery backlog.

Evaluating Outcomes

Finally, at the end of the designated term (usually a quarter, perhaps as short as a month for more junior teams), the team should present and defend their progress toward their outcome to their leadership.

Managers should not expect that a team will hit their outcome every term.

However, if a team does all the right activities and consistently misses their outcomes, then leadership needs to step in and help evaluate where the disconnect is between the activities and the outcomes.

Managers can and should give feedback. But their primary mechanisms for managing the team are negotiating the outcome and evaluating the final outcome.