My passion for building happy high-performing teams has driven me to pursue a career as a software engineering manager. Through many cycles of try and catch, fail, retry, and success, I have learned many valuable lessons. Here, I would like to offer my 2 cents in the hope that it may be helpful to some.
What do you mean by “happy high-performing product team”?
👉 a cohesive group of individuals working together
💪 developing a product effectively and efficiently
🤝 with strong mutual trust and accountability
😊 maintaining a positive work culture, promoting job satisfaction
🤩 producing outstanding results consistently in a sustainable manner
🎯 achieving shared goals
🔥 continuously evolving and adapting as a team
That surely is a lot to ask, where do we start?
Build a Shared Sense of Purpose and Unity
In the next 1:1 meeting, consider asking team member why we are building a certain product or feature. If the answer is simply because someone higher up or a product manager said so, it definitely is worth exploring a few things here:
🌟 Get buy-ins for the North Star
It is quite common to hear about North Star at an organisation level. Did you know that a team could have its own North Star too? It works the same way — defined based on a vision and serves as an overarching objective to guide everyone’s effort towards a common purpose.
For the team to fully embrace the North Star, you might consider
- Involve the team in the defining process, try interactive discussions, keep open communication, and encourage questions and input. That way, it helps to ensure team members’ values and passions are reflected in the vision.
- On the other hand, if the definition comes top-down, try to craft a narrative that brings it to life when conveying the message. The North Star is meant to be both aspirational and inspirational. Tell a compelling and memorable story that resonates with the team. Metaphors and visuals, such as diagrams or pictures, could be useful tools to help emphasise.
🎯 Set Clear Goals and Expectations
While having a North Star can certainly serve as guidance, it is essential to set clear and measurable goals, which provide more specific targets for the team and individuals to work towards.
Over the years many companies have adopted Objectives and Key Results(OKRs). OKRs can be set in different scopes, from departments to individual levels. The idea is to set a clear objective, accompanied by specific and measurable key results within a given timeframe to measure success. Of course, there are many other methodologies, regardless of which approach your organisation uses, the key is to ensure the goals and expectations are ambitious and challenging, yet actionable and achievable.
Once the goal has been set, the team works together to translate it into actual engineering work. Reporting metrics should be included as part of the work — collecting both quantitative and qualitative results to track progress. Help team members understand how their work contributes to both larger organisational goals and team goals. When team members feel connected to the bigger picture, they are more likely to be engaged, motivated, and committed.
Stay away from unrealistic goals as they could backfire to cause burnout, demotivation, and a whole lot of negative impacts. Keep in mind that some of these goals may need to stay dynamic and adaptable to changing circumstances, especially in fast-growing companies, it is important to review regularly and adjust to ensure they remain relevant and aligns well with the overall mission.
💁 Be Transparent about the Progress
The quest to reach that ultimate goal could be a long journey. To build momentum and maintain team engagement, sharing progress tracking and stats is super important! This could be done within the team at a regular cadence, or with a wider audience such as at a Town Hall or All Hands meeting.
Being transparent about the progress can help surface potential risks before the project falls off track. Before risk becomes a problem, the team shall proactively take action to prevent that happens.
Tracking progress also provides great opportunities to celebrate small wins along the way. Celebrations are fun and actually, it also helps reinforce the team’s sense of purpose when the hard work and contribution are acknowledged and appreciated.
In the event that strategy or plan changes, it is critical to inform the team and ensure everyone is clear on the reasonings behind it. Changing is not a bad thing at all, however, it needs to be handled with caution to eliminate risks of damaging team trust and morale due to miscommunication or lack of transparency.
Build a Strong Sense of Product Ownership
The same question, why are we building this?
A strong connection to the product cultivates a strong sense of ownership, unlocking the full potential of the team.
🤲 Empowering Teams to Take on Product Challenges
In my experience working with companies of various sizes and levels of maturity, I notice that teams are often presented with a pre-defined solution to execute, rather than being empowered to tackle the challenge and develop their own solution 😔. This really goes against team autonomy or supporting domain experts to excel. Generally, teams within their respective domains are best equipped to make informed decisions. If the team is not at that stage of maturity yet, they ought to be given opportunities to learn and improve.
Senior leaders shall take a step back — empower teams to perform at their best by setting the vision and challenges, provide guidance and support to the team during the process, and hold the team accountable for creativity and problem-solving. This not only strengthens the bond between the team and the product but also promotes team growth and enables scalability as the company expands.
⬅️ Shift Left in Product Development
Traditionally, Product (Manager) owns the product direction, Design owns the UX/UI quality, and Engineering owns the technical deliverable. Engineers are typically heavily focusing on the building phase, however, developing a product involves more than just writing code — it encompasses the entire process from ideation to continuous iterations. If you have not, I strongly recommend involving all team members in the early stage of product development, especially during the decision-making process to ensure everyone is included in shaping the product:
- Share findings, such as market research and competitor analysis, to keep everyone in sync and continue developing in-depth domain knowledge together
- Run team creativity sessions to brainstorm product solutions, discuss and pivot among approaches from commercial, UX, and engineering perspectives
- Define product roadmap together as a team by going through the value-vs-effort or similar exercise, reinforcing alignment on product goals and objectives
- Conduct design walkthroughs and feedback sessions regularly, gather input from the team to refine functionalities
- Foster a mindset of continuous product improvement by establishing a feedback and iteration loop. Encourage engineers to shadow in customer calls to develop empathy and gain a better understanding of customer needs, pain points, and challenges
By shifting engagement left in the product development process, team members are more likely to feel a stronger sense of ownership and pride in the final product. You will most likely be surprised how many great ideas that can emerge from here onwards 😉
👉 Part.II
