{"id":2016,"date":"2017-03-26T15:59:38","date_gmt":"2017-03-26T07:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yibo.net\/?p=2016"},"modified":"2017-03-26T15:59:38","modified_gmt":"2017-03-26T07:59:38","slug":"good-product-team-bad-product-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/?p=2016","title":{"rendered":"Good Product Team \/ Bad Product Team"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NOTE:\u00a0My friend and colleague Jeff Patton is the author of an upcoming book on the general topic of User Stories and especially the technique of Story Mapping. \u00a0I was asked to write a foreword for this new book, and this article is an excerpt from the foreword. \u00a0I was also a reviewer of the book and it is definitely a must-read for any product person and fills a very big gap in the current library of Agile titles. \u00a0If you\u2019d like to pre-order the book you can do so from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/shop.oreilly.com\/product\/0636920033851.do\">O\u2019Reilly<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve had the extremely good fortune to be able to work with many of the very best technology product teams in the world. People creating the products you use and love every day. \u00a0Teams that are literally changing the world.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve also been brought in to try to help with companies that are not doing so well. \u00a0Startups racing to get some traction before the money runs out. \u00a0Larger companies struggling to replicate their early innovation. \u00a0Teams failing to continuously add value to their business. \u00a0Leaders frustrated with how long it takes to go from idea to reality. \u00a0Engineers exasperated with their product owners.<\/p>\n<p>What I\u2019ve learned is that there is a profound difference between how the very best product companies create technology products, and the rest. And I don\u2019t mean minor differences. \u00a0Everything from how the leaders behave, to the level of empowerment of teams, to how the organization thinks about funding, staffing and producing products, down to how product, design and engineering collaborate to discover effective solutions for their customers.<\/p>\n<p>With a grateful nod to Ben Horowitz\u2019s classic\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/benhorowitz.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/05\/good-product-manager.pdf\">Good Product Manager\/Bad Product Manager<\/a>,\u00a0for those that have not yet had the opportunity to participate in, or observe a strong product team up close, in this article I wanted to try to give you a glimpse into some of the important differences between strong product teams and weak teams:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Good teams have a compelling product vision that they pursue with a missionary-like passion. \u00a0Bad teams are mercenaries.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams get their inspiration and product ideas from their scorecard KPI\u2019s, from observing customers struggle, from analyzing the data customers generate from using their product, and from constantly seeking to apply new technology to solve real problems. \u00a0Bad teams gather requirements from sales and customers.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams understand who each of their key stakeholders are, they understand the constraints that these stakeholders operate in, and they are committed to inventing solutions that work not just for users and customers, but also work within the constraints of the business. Bad teams gather requirements from stakeholders.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams are skilled in the many techniques to rapidly try out product ideas to determine which ones are truly worth building. \u00a0Bad teams hold meetings to generate prioritized roadmaps.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams love to have brainstorming discussions with smart thought-leaders from across the company. \u00a0Bad teams get offended when someone outside their team dares to suggest they do something.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams have product, design and engineering sit side-by-side, and embrace the give and take between the functionality, the user experience and the enabling technology. \u00a0Bad teams sit in their respective functional areas, and ask that others make requests for their services in the form of documents and scheduling meetings.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams are constantly trying out new ideas in order to innovate, but doing so in ways that protect the revenue and protect the brand. Bad teams are still waiting for permission to run a test.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams insist they have the skill sets on their team necessary to create winning products, such as strong interaction design. \u00a0Bad teams don\u2019t even know what interaction designers are.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams ensure that their engineers have time to try out the discovery prototypes every day so that they can contribute their thoughts on how to make the product better. \u00a0Bad teams show the prototypes to the engineers during sprint planning so they can estimate.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams engage directly with end-users and customers every week, to better understand their customers, and to see the customer\u2019s response to their latest ideas. \u00a0Bad teams think they are the customer.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams know that many of their favorite ideas won\u2019t end up working for customers, and even the ones that could will need several iterations to get to the point where they provide the desired outcome. \u00a0Bad teams just build what\u2019s on the roadmap and are satisfied with meeting dates and ensuring quality.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams understand the need for speed and how rapid iteration is the key to innovation, and they understand this speed comes from the right techniques and not forced labor. \u00a0Bad teams complain they are slow because their colleagues are not working hard enough.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams make high-integrity commitments after they\u2019ve evaluated the request and ensured they have a viable solution that will actually work for the customer and the business. \u00a0Bad teams complain about being a sales-driven company.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams instrument their work so that they can immediately understand how their product is being used and make adjustments based on the data. \u00a0Bad teams consider analytics and reporting a \u201cnice to have.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Good teams integrate and release continuously, knowing that a constant stream of smaller releases provides a much more stable solution for their customers. \u00a0Bad teams test manually at the end of a painful integration phase and then release everything at once.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams obsess over their reference customers. \u00a0Bad teams obsess over competitors.<\/li>\n<li>Good teams celebrate when they\u00a0achieve a significant impact to\u00a0the business KPI\u2019s. \u00a0Bad teams celebrate when they finally release something.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If too many of these items strike too close to home,\u00a0I hope you\u2019ll consider raising the bar for your team and see if you can\u2019t experience the difference.<\/p>\n<p>The Article is from\u00a0http:\/\/svpg.com\/good-product-team-bad-product-team\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NOTE:\u00a0My friend and colleague Jeff Patton is the author&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/timg-38.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2016"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2018,"href":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016\/revisions\/2018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}