Building isn’t always best

I’m a Product Manager, and I have no developers on my team.

Sounds like a product management nightmare at first. How can we drive progress towards our goal without the ability to build?

But as much as it’s slowed things down, I think it’s helped me define what progress can look like.

Building good products isn’t just about shipping features, but there is a general expectation that there is a continual build cycle.

But there’s plenty of progress that can be made without development.

I think there are three ways to progress towards a product team goal:

• Building
• Learning
• Enabling

Photo by Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash

Building

This is the default way to progress towards a goal — build something to make an impact on your users.

This could be anything from a color change on a button to a brand-new feature, but it’s always got a hypothesis behind it that assumes it will improve the user’s experience.

But without the ability to make these sorts of changes, there are still two more ways to progress.

“person leaning on table” by Startaê Team on Unsplash

Learning

The build process should always include learning upfront to validate user needs and validate the hypothesis.

But sometimes it can be just as valuable to learn without a specific build or feature in mind. Carrying out broad user research is a crucial way for the team — especially the Product Manager — to understand the larger picture. This kind of research can often be left behind in the rush to build.

There’s also smaller learning projects. Carrying out A/B tests, card sorting exercises, skill-sharing and team building are all different yet valuable ways to learn as a team.

Growing as a team, either through growing shared understanding or building team relationships, is crucial to progress.

“basil plant on brown soil” by Evan Kirby on Unsplash

Enabling

We don’t always get to ship the shiny new feature in a sprint.

Sometimes it’s about thinking ahead, looking at what we can do now to enable new things further down the line.

This is primarily down to the Product Manager to carry out. For example, building internal relationships with stakeholders is a key enabler for future projects.

Or, perhaps it’s about talking to your team about what’s blocking development in certain areas, so that you can work on smoothing out these problems before you plan to build.

My recommendation: take a step back from the constant rush to build. Those learnings and enablers are just as crucial for helping you and your team to make progress towards your goal.