🚀 EVO19: Making Product Decisions as a Team
Product Evolution is about helping Product professionals, Product teams, Product organizations and the products they develop to level up.
tl;dr
Making high quality Product decisions, fast, in a way that involves the right people, is something that helps Product teams achieve fast flow.
At the same time, lacking clarity on who decides how on what is a source of lots of frustrations in many Product teams.
This is an exercise to help with this kind of clarity around Product decisions.
Multiple ways of deciding
First, it’s useful when the team members become aware there are multiple ways of making decisions and they’ve probably experienced already most of these approaches.
For individual decisions:
Tell: a person decides and then informs others.
Sell: a person decides and then shares benefits and reasons behind the decision with others.
Consult: a person consults others before making the final decision on their own.
For group decisions:
Vote: (or majority decides) the group dedicates a limited time for reaching a group decision. If the time expires, the group votes and the majority decides.
Consent: the group discusses until no major objections are left, therefore proceeds with consent from all members.
Consensus: the group discusses until all members are agreeing with the decision, therefore reaching consensus.
Multiple areas of Product decisions
Then, there are various areas in which you need to decide, individually or as a team, how to evolve your Product. In our model:
Product Delivery: how will you deliver your product? what will you deliver?
Product Metrics: how are you measuring the progress of the product?
Product Discovery: how will you discover the right product to build? what do you aim to discover?
Product Marketing: how will you market your product?
Product Insights: what relevant information helps you make Product decisions?
Product Strategy: what is the direction of your product?
Hands-on activity for your Product team
Here is a 1.5h exercise that you can facilitate for better clarity around decisions in your Product team.
10 min: Intro
Share with your fellow team members the 6 ways of deciding and the 6 areas of Product decisions;
Answer clarification questions;
10 min x 6: Clarification talks. For each area (Product Delivery, Product Metrics etc.), discuss:
A. what kind of Product decisions are relevant for your team?
B. what decision mode is best fit for that kind of decision?
See example for illustrative points;
10 min: Wrap-up
Key takeaways from the exercise - each team member could share 1 idea;
Next steps - what are you going to do with the outputs from this exercise?
Facilitation tips
For a face to face session:
You could prepare 10 min upfront by drawing the 6 decisions modes x 6 Product development areas on the whiteboard;
Decide who will take notes on the whiteboard while the team discusses;
Have post-its handy if you want your colleagues each come up with ideas individually before sharing with all;
Alternatively, you can print the template in an A4 format, so each team member can write their ideas on a paper;
For a virtual session:
You could prepare 10 min upfront by uploading the template to your preferred workshop tool (Miro, Mural, Powerpoint etc.)
Decide who will take notes on the workshop tool while the team discusses;
For all setups
Prepare a bit by becoming familiar with the 6 decisions modes x 6 Product development areas, for easily explaining them to the whole team;
For the clarifications talks part, focus on what needs to be achieved together (type of decision and how it should be made, by whom);
Take note of the off-topics and propose a separate session to discuss those;
Reach out on LinkedIn if you have any clarification questions, or feedback after you’ve done the exercise.
Downloadable resources:
As a strategic adviser and lifelong learner, Bülent Duagi works with Directors in 🇷🇴 Tech companies to help them make more impact with better strategic thinking - which usually translates to:
🧭 having a clear strategy that enables better and faster decision making;
🤝 organizing better to both run operations and implement strategy with the available bandwidth and budgets;
🚀 implementing strategic initiatives and programs in an efficient and effective manner, paying attention to the people side of change;
⚡️ intentionally developing proper internal capabilities that are sustainable in the long run.