Nicely penned, complete and concise, description of a customer-first mechanism (topic for another post perhaps :)) for building a scalable culture. Keep them coming Joshua...
Thanks for the piece! Curious where you draw the lines so the exec team isn't micromanaging the product roadmap - do you just apply this for large/new rollouts/launches?
Good question. There's not a one-sized fits all answer, but to be successful I'd make sure a few things happen.
First, create a culture where everyone uses the same templates/this approach for nearly all of the roadmap. It's too easy for people to say "these features are minor, they don't require analysis" and then over time a significant percent of your product's experience hasn't really gotten any kind of scrutiny or deep thought. There are exceptions (bug fixes, minor UI tweaks, etc) where this is overkill - but if your PMs or Senior Devs/Eng Managers are good, writing these kind of product templates isn't an insurmountable task. It's a good process to create & review them as a team to hold yourself accountable, if nothing else.
Second, I'd err on the side of *starting* with most of the product roadmap being reviewed in-depth at the exec level, until you've built a culture where you're sure people below you are applying the same standards across the company. What feels like micro-management at the beginning is really about establishing culture & practices. Culture setting is a large part of what successful executives focus on in their job.
Between these two things, execs will/should naturally back off to only reviewing the larger rollouts/launches, because they can be confident the non-exec/team management is conducting similar reviews and making defensible, smart decisions. The execs then the use mechanisms I've described in other blog posts (weekly/quarterly business reviews) to dive into the business.
I will say that while I've seen micro-management at the exec team level, I've more often seen the opposite - where execs aren't diving deep enough and where un-reviewed product management decisions leads to diverging customer experiences across product lines, or wasted efforts that could have been avoided with earlier exec review.
Nicely penned, complete and concise, description of a customer-first mechanism (topic for another post perhaps :)) for building a scalable culture. Keep them coming Joshua...
Thanks Wayne, high praise
Thanks for the piece! Curious where you draw the lines so the exec team isn't micromanaging the product roadmap - do you just apply this for large/new rollouts/launches?
Good question. There's not a one-sized fits all answer, but to be successful I'd make sure a few things happen.
First, create a culture where everyone uses the same templates/this approach for nearly all of the roadmap. It's too easy for people to say "these features are minor, they don't require analysis" and then over time a significant percent of your product's experience hasn't really gotten any kind of scrutiny or deep thought. There are exceptions (bug fixes, minor UI tweaks, etc) where this is overkill - but if your PMs or Senior Devs/Eng Managers are good, writing these kind of product templates isn't an insurmountable task. It's a good process to create & review them as a team to hold yourself accountable, if nothing else.
Second, I'd err on the side of *starting* with most of the product roadmap being reviewed in-depth at the exec level, until you've built a culture where you're sure people below you are applying the same standards across the company. What feels like micro-management at the beginning is really about establishing culture & practices. Culture setting is a large part of what successful executives focus on in their job.
Between these two things, execs will/should naturally back off to only reviewing the larger rollouts/launches, because they can be confident the non-exec/team management is conducting similar reviews and making defensible, smart decisions. The execs then the use mechanisms I've described in other blog posts (weekly/quarterly business reviews) to dive into the business.
I will say that while I've seen micro-management at the exec team level, I've more often seen the opposite - where execs aren't diving deep enough and where un-reviewed product management decisions leads to diverging customer experiences across product lines, or wasted efforts that could have been avoided with earlier exec review.