The whole point of product management is to increase the product capabilities over time. Those capabilities will expand the customer base by offering new value. More customers means more revenue. That's why the product vision for this release is so critical.
That product vision requires strategic product leadership. The backlog is the tactical implementation of that strategy—tactical product leadership. The other product leadership activities require short feedback loops so they can use both strategic and tactical thinking to create the best possible product.
This is why all the famous product management people insist that the “product owner” must be the product manager.
However, very few people can slide up and down the continuum between the strategic and tactical and back again. That's the point of the continuum image above.
(I've written about the problems of one person being able to move between the strategic and the tactical before. See How to Rethink More Strategic and Tactical Skills for Product People for more product-focused specifics. Also, see Management Myth #12: I Must Promote the Best Technical Person to Be a Manager for the manager/technical lead continuum.)
Some people can easily move between the strategic and the tactical. Most of us have a more difficult time changing our perspectives. And some people only think at one or the other level—the strategic or the tactical—never both.
What do you do if you don't have sufficient product thinking at both the strategic and tactical levels? That's why a solo product leader is often insufficient. And that's why the collaboration in a product value team works. Because what are the chances all three (or more) people only think strategically? Or only think tactically? Very small.
Possible Types of Product Value Teams
So far, my clients have succeeded with these types of product value teams:
- Vertical, to take advantage of sharing knowledge vertically inside the organization. In small organizations, this might range from the C-level “down” to the product leader in the team. In larger organizations, with a couple of product managers but too few team-based product leaders, this might be within the product function.
- Cross-functional, to take advantage of everyone who knows about this product. This product value team is a lot like a program team. It might include Customer Success, Marketing, Training (if you have that function), and anyone else who has input into the strategy and understands the tactics. (See Scaling Agile? Think Out, Not Up for images of both small-world networks and the technical program team.)
- Program product value team, to shepherd the business value of the entire product. (I've written a lot about this, in Agile and Lean Program Management and other agile program management posts.)
I'll start with the vertical product team in the next part of the series.
The Product Value Team Series:
- How to Avoid Solo Product Leadership Failure with a Product Value Team, Part 1
- Part 2: Why Teams Need Both Strategic and Tactical Product Leadership
- How a Vertical Product Value Team Shares Strategy and Tactics for One Product, Part 3, to “share” information more widely.
- The Cross-Functional Product Value Team, Part 4, to incorporate information from across the organization.
- The Program Product Value Team, Part 5, to shepherd the business value of the entire product.
- Summary post
(As I write these posts, I will fix the titles here.)