This week’s Sunday Rewind goes back to 2022 and a #mtpcon SF+Americas 2022 keynote from Scott Williamson, former Chief Product Officer at GitLab, who offers seven signs that you may be in a bad product system, and gives some practical and actionable advice on making meaningful changes.
Everyone starts with the solution: Solution-first thinking is natural but can mean we end up solving the wrong problem or making the wrong assumptions. Scott recommends interrogating assumptions through qualitative interviews, once patterns emerge you can be confident you’re investing in the right thing.
Planning is dictated: Dictated development is rarely scalable. Creating an Opportunity Canvas for every new idea can help navigate this, Scott says, and he recommends the template as a way to frame and assess initiatives.
Product direction isn’t clear: Unclear company or product strategy can lead to confusing product direction, leading to misalignment across teams, and outwardly affecting adoption and market share. Scott advises creating and distributing an Amazon 6-pager within the business, outlining product strategy, “your challenges, and how you might overcome that in a really succinct way”.
Ownership isn’t clear: Team ownership issues may result in overlapping or repeated project work and missed deadlines, particularly when development touches shared services. Scott recommends defining a charter which draws boundaries around the products and services each team works on.
No one is sure what progress and success look like: You must measure outcomes and track progress in order to understand success. Scott recommends that teams adopt KPIs.
Everything is a priority: Continually adding priorities can be disruptive to planning and may ‘reduce velocity, create chaos, and just create this constantly changing environment’, damaging morale. Scott recommends adopting Product Themes, which sit as memorable strategic groups of initiatives on a roadmap.
No focus on career development: Companies without staff development plans often have higher attrition. If you can’t rely on leadership, Scott recommends creating your own career development document, outlining your goals for the next few years.
He finishes by recommending that you look back across the signs of bad product systems to make sure you ask the right questions when assessing the next one.
Watch the original talk:Top 7 signs you’re in a bad product system by Scott Williamson
