Teams can flounder in the face of insufficient strategic and tactical product leadership. What problems does this product need to solve for its customers and when? How does the team know? That issue of strategy and tactics might require a Vertical Product Value team to answer. While that's an unusual approach, it might be better than no or insufficient product leadership. Here's a story of one team.
Problems That Created the Need for Vertical Product Value Team
Acme, a 60-person organization realized that they could move from “dumb” hardware products to “smart” hardware products that integrated software and firmware. However, they had just one product manager Amy, in their Engineering organization. That was fine for their 12-person Engineering team. Until Acme and their customers realized they could create three different products to solve their customers' problems. (This is a sign of early market opportunity and the chaos that comes with it. See Product Planning, Information Persistence, & Product Lifetime for more information.)
Amy realized she had to manage the customer demands with what Acme wanted to deliver. She chose to meet and speak with customers. And because this was a hardware problem, she often needed to travel to the customers to see their specific needs.
That meant Amy did not have time to clarify the next set of problems she wanted the product to solve. So she relied on Terry, the team's business analyst.
Terry did a great job with the tactics. However, even though she and Amy spoke weekly, Terry did not understand this ever-evolving product strategy. Too often, the team was stuck with high WIP because the stories the team worked on were too large and too complex for the current iteration of the product strategy.
The feedback loops were too long for these innovative products. (See Multiple Short Feedback Loops Support Innovation for more details.) Everyone was frustrated. They needed to solve the problems in the team before they could solve the product problems.
How the Vertical Product Value Team Works
Amy knew she needed help from her manager, Jenny, the VP Product. However, Jenny wasn't always available either. So they brought in Amy's peer, Don, the Marketing Communications Manager. The three of them worked as a management cohort, focused on Acme's product strategy.
As Amy discussed the products with current and potential customers, she debriefed with Don and Jenny every day, even if it was just for 15 minutes. Those 15 minutes helped Amy clarify the next set of questions for the customers, and to clarify their thinking about the possible product strategy and how that worked for the corporate strategy. In addition, those 15 minutes allowed either Jenny or Don to provide strategic input to the team.
While Terry was not a product manager, she was able to understand what today's product strategy meant for the team's backlog. That allowed Terry to work with the team to create smaller stories the team could finish faster.
The image above also has dotted lines from the customer to the team and the possible product leader. While Acme separated the team from the customers, you might consider how your feature/product teams might work with your customer. That depends on how much you trust your customers to explain their problems, not ask for features. And how much you trust your teams to focus on problems, not change what they're currently doing.
The Vertical Product Value team solves the problem of sharing the product strategy and next set of tactics more widely. That can help a lot in smaller organizations. However, the VPT does not solve the problem of integrating product strategy across the organization. That's for the next post.
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
- 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