Discipline

• Craft. Be the best in the world at what you do.
• Prioritization. Know how to say no and when to say yes.
• Cadence. Deliver like clockwork.
• ROI. Project and demonstrate profitable outcomes.

Craft

Be the best in the world at what you do.

Start with yourself. Aspire to, create, and deliver excellence through your work. The team attracts, keeps, and magnifies talent because of a hard-earned reputation of excellence.

Each discipline's team (e.g. product management, UX design, engineering, data science, etc.) engages in regular interactive training aimed at refining their knowledge in and competencies with their craft. The training sessions are facilitated by the foremost expert for each discipline in the organization. The training follows a pattern of “explain, demonstrate, practice, evaluate”, with interactive training in the session, assignments for implementation, 1:1 guidance with direct managers, and deliverables that relate to their actual work.

Each area has a methodology for assessing competency and measuring progress. Take baselines each year and measure progress throughout the year, culminating in a formal performance assessment for each individual, which includes 360 feedback. Managers are also assessed with a focus on their ability to mentor and multiply.

Prioritization

Know how to say no and when to say yes.

Ordering the roadmap

• In general, the highest value, lowest cost stuff goes to the top.
• Evaluate the ROI in terms of the main categories described in the “ROI” section below, then consider all of the estimated costs related to the effort to deliver, and then go with what has the greatest net present value. However…
• The product manager also considers whether a “quick win” or “low hanging fruit” has value in terms of morale, relationship, or efficiency.
• Consider implementation and GTM strategies.
• The priority of the roadmap should be justified by quantifiable research/data and the input/alignment of all key stakeholders (the product team, the business unit, and leadership).
• Prioritization of the roadmap should focus on the context of the product strategy and consider principles of MVP, complete solution, and disruption.

Managing the whirlwind

Product teams evaluate the whirlwind that comes at them every day. The default position is to protect the roadmap. But there will be a process for injecting urgent items. Failure to plan ahead is not an excuse for imposing urgency. Allow the team to feel the pain of the consequences of not planning ahead until the culture changes. To determine whether there is a warranted exception to the roadmap, the product manager should assess as follows:

1. Is this essential to the current objectives?
   1. Is this an exception?
   2. Is there an imminent and significant threat to business continuity or key metrics?
   3. Are customers at risk?
2. Does this substantially help us to achieve the objectives?
3. What is the impact on vision, adoption, quality, and business value?

Cadence

Deliver like clockwork.

The desired outcomes depend on disciplined delivery. Trust is earned through deliberate and transparent consistency. The ability to improve depends on frequent output, evaluation, and iteration.

Follow a cadence of personal and collective accountability:

1. Regular personal productivity. The team is only as strong as its weakest link. Through training (see Craft above) and team support, everyone lifts and helps each other. With the combined effort of many individuals, there is a multiplying effect greater than the sum of the parts.
2. Regular production demos (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.). This is aimed at a) creating a trusted heartbeat that drives energy and life into every team, b) reinforcing the principles of agile to release and iterate often, and c) to ensure the breaking of things down into their atomic scope and making incremental progress toward key milestones.
3. Regular accountability reports. Accountability to stakeholders, the team, and the customer drives clarity, visibility, trust and iterative improvement through valuable feedback and collaborative guidance.

ROI

Project and demonstrate profitable outcomes.

The definition of ROI is “anything that benefits anyone as a result of the investment”. ROI should be “profitable” in that the outcomes justify (or are greater in magnitude than) the cost to bring that feature to market.

Product managers are responsible for acquiring the data necessary for and the alignment around projected ROI of roadmap items, which are ordered in a way that heavily weights ROI. Projected ROI must be backed by quantifiable findings from research. Product managers are responsible to report on — and product teams are accountable for — demonstrating positive ROI post-release (according to a planned assessment timeline).

The key areas of ROI to focus on, quantify and measure are as follows:

• Vision. Is the target persona experiencing the desired benefit (solution to the defined problem)?
• Quality. The solution has high integrity in terms of performance, usability, reliability, security, etc. — and is quantifiably better than the alternative.
• Adoption. People are using the product at the target rate of onboarding, the expected repeat usage, and to the depth that we want them to be using it.
• Economics. Impact on conversion, revenue, cost reduction, and other efficiencies and economic indicators.