Make things open — it makes things better
My first product job was at Government Digital Service, part of the Cabinet Office in the UK civil service. One of our priorities was ‘Make things open — it makes things better.’ I thought I knew what this meant i.e. increased transparency would improve performance and citizens would become more interested in our performance. But I was wrong.
Now, 9 or so years later the value of transparency and doing things in the open has finally really ‘clicked’ for me. Doing things in the open helps me concentrate on what I am doing and why. At the point of making it public, I think to myself — anyone in the world could see this now — is it really the best I can do? Is it really what I think?
Putting things out in the world (or “Publishing”) might be a bit formal in this sense, but I’m going to cover a few examples of things we do at accuRx to ‘make things open — it makes things better.’
Blogging
A few weeks back in one of our product community catch ups someone asked why we blog. It’s a good question. When we’re as busy as we are right now, why take the time to write about something that everyone who needs to know already knows? But does everyone who wants to know already know?
As organisations grow (like ours) and Covid-19 introduces new ways of working communication can become more challenging. It’s no longer possible to have a quick chat in the kitchen, or jump into a room to catch up or share some new context. This means things can fall through the cracks and you can waste time and effort by working in different directions.
Writing a blog post forces you to really think about the problem you are solving, the plan you are about to implement or the vision you are setting out. Unlike a conversation, you can’t respond to questions mid-flow, take a change of tack, or offer to come back to things later. You’re putting everything out there to be challenged. It’s a great way of checking whether what you think makes sense, actually does make sense. In short, if you can’t explain what you are trying to do or achieve in a blog post then you might not know yourself…
Writing for a wider audience helps you to focus the words you use and the message you communicate. It makes you cover the most important things in detail and ignore the things that really don’t matter. It becomes another tool to help a product manager prioritise.
For example, Everyone might remember product ‘X’ as a success, but was it? When did we last look at the data or feedback — did we really achieve what we wanted to? Writing for a wider audience gives you the impetus to check your assumptions again before you put them out into the world.
Roadmaps
Most people I know have a love/hate relationship with roadmaps. Roadmaps are a tool that help you to visualize your priorities. They cover what you are going to pick up next and why you are going to do that. They are a great way to communicate what you are doing and why.
However, most of us crave certainty. So when producing roadmaps we are often asked for dates and milestones. Just the other day I was asked for a ‘5 year roadmap’. This is where the problems can start.
Roadmaps are designed, or at least should be, to change. Every week we learn something new which might influence what we prioritise and why. A great example of this for accuRx is video consultations. Before Covid-19 hit, we had no plans for video consultations. It might have been discussed, but definitely wasn’t on any roadmaps. However, we pivoted because it was immediately clear it was what our users needed.
We publish a public roadmap that our product managers are responsible for updating every week. Why do we do this? To share our thinking, let our users and customers know what we are working on, but most importantly to be open to challenge. Our public roadmap allows users and customers to vote on what items they think are most important to do next. I’ve never worked anywhere that does as much user research as accuRx, but being open about our roadmap and priorities can encourage more users to be involved in our plans, and in turn helps us to learn and understand more. By being open, users get to understand what we are working on and we get the benefit of their input.
You can see our roadmap here: https://trello.com/b/ah3Uum3Z/accurx-public-roadmap
Product Manager Progression framework
The final thing I want to talk about making public is our product manager progression framework.
It might seem odd to be publishing something which has such an internal focus. But in addition to the benefits of publishing i’ve mentioned above, I think it does something else really important.
It makes it clear about the kind of product organisation we are.
For our current team, this is us pinning our colours to the mast, communicating what is expected from the product community at accuRx.
For possible future hires, this gives them an insight into product at accuRx. You don’t need to spend long on job boards to see how different product manager roles can be. By being open about our progression framework, future hires can see how our job adverts map to our company values and job competencies.
So that’s my take on why making things open makes things better, along with a few of the things we are doing at accuRx to live up to this. If you have any thoughts or want to know more about product at accuRx, get in touch — matt@accurx.com. We’re also hiring!
