I started this series bemoaning the fact that we have too few product managers. That leads to no product leaders for a team. Worse, some teams have either strategic product thinkers or tactical thinkers—but not both. Instead, we can consider several possible product value teams to prevent insufficient product leadership.
I already discussed the Vertical Product Team, especially for smaller organizations. While I'm not sure that's “ideal,” some of my clients have found that engaging more managers up and down the hierarchy supports product strategy and tactical thinking.
Now, it's time to consider the Cross-Functional Product Value Team.
Cross-Functional Product Value Team
This kind of product value team expects specific people, often managers, across the organization to collaborate to work for the product's success. Should they be managers, as I showed in the picture? Probably not. But they do need to be relatively experienced people who can move between strategic and tactical thinking. Not just in the problem space (the problems the product solves)—but also in the solution space.
These experienced people understand how the current product does and does not serve the current users. That understanding helps the Cross-Functional Product Value team use all of its strengths: strategic and tactical thinking, along with problem and solution space expertise:
- They can assess how product architecture and design decisions can either allow or prevent specific product users or focuses. (A strategic concern.)
- How much of a give feature set the team needs to finish now—and how much later. (Those are often tactical decisions, such as Consider Product Options with Minimum Outcomes.)
- How to make all of these decisions without incurring cruft (unfinished work) or reasonable technical debt.
We normally think that a product leader—alone—can make these decisions. Very few product leaders can, especially more junior people. That's why I like this Cross-Functional Product Value Team to act as a thinking companion for the team's current product leader.
Two of my clients are experimenting with using their custom AIs to help in this decision-making. They both say the jury is out on that experiment because their users are unpredictable. (Imagine that—that users do not think the same way a predictive model does!)Â
But the big idea is this: This Cross-Functional Product Value Team collaborates for the good of the product. Not the people for themselves. In that way, they are very similar to a program team.
Collaborate Like a Program Team
Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization offers a deep dive into how people from different functions can collaborate. This image is from that book.
The point is this: A program team collaborates to deliver a specific overarching business goal—the product. In the same way, the Cross-Functional Product Value team collaborates to define and refine this product's strategy and tactics.
One of my clients does have a product leader who is available to the team daily. But one of my clients, ByProduct, does not. Both of those clients work collaboratively with the Cross-Functional Product Value team to learn from the past week's finished work and to refine the product strategy for the next week. In addition, ByProduct, uses their weekly meetings to also workshop stories with the cross-functional development team. the ByProduct Cross-Functional Product Value team also meets whenever they need to assess what the team learned from its most recent delivery or experiment.
Is this an “ideal” product value team? I'm not sure. But the Cross-Functional Product Value team does take perspectives and experience from across the organization and from the customer(s). That helps everyone make better decisions.
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 Collaborates for Strategy and Tactics, Part 4
- How the Program Product Value Team Focuses on Overall Business Value, Part 5
- Product Value Teams: Collaborative Leadership for Faster Learning and Delivery, Part 6