Going beyond ‘good’: our product principles
What does good look like? It’s one of the most common questions we ask in any piece of work. It’s a phrase that hides a lot of questions too: What are we trying to achieve? What is this product supposed to be? How can we make things better?
Getting a shared picture of ‘good’ is a challenge. That’s especially true at the FT. We have teams working on a diverse collection of products: from targeted news apps for new audiences, to internal tools for the HR team. We didn’t have a collective sense of ‘good’. Expectations across teams could be wildly different.
Earlier this year we put the foundations in place to fix that. We developed five principles for great products at the FT. They’re helping us make decisions about what to build on and what to leave behind.
1. Be distinct
On newsstands, the FT jumps out. Build bold products that stand out from the competition. Make the most of our reputation for innovation, insight and integrity.
2. Become indispensable
Our products are a platform for users’ success. Find out what they need and make that the focus of what you build. Make things that are essential and a joy to use.
3. Provably brilliant
Go beyond good ideas. Find which changes will have the biggest impact, whether they’re ambitious experiments or tiny tweaks. Measure them. Use what you learn to make them even better.
4. Products are partnerships
Embrace expertise from around the company and add it to your own; diverse perspectives lead to better products. Collaborate within your team to solve problems, and empower others to succeed.
5. Build on every success (and failure)
Needs and expectations change, so great products should evolve. Investigate, iterate, and repeat. Strive for simpler; prune or retire things when they’ve served their purpose.
Developing our principles
These five principles were a true collaboration. In workshops we asked Product Directors, Product Managers and Designers to talk about two things:
- How do you want people to talk about our products?
- What were the conditions under which they did their best work?
The two questions prompted great discussions about what ‘good’ actually means in practice. It helped us identify themes to embed within the principles around measurement (Provably brilliant) and product quality (Become indispensable). And it was a great reminder that ‘good’ is a moving target. Build on every success (and failure) acknowledges we won’t get it right all the time, but we have to keep going.
It also flushed out some of the challenges we have within the FT. For some people Products are partnerships really is a mindset shift. We’re a big organisation, and flushing out the valuable insights can take patience. Teams have to build on relationships to develop great products.
Be distinct took the longest to pin down. We haggled over the exact phrasing of this one for weeks. We knew we needed a principle that acknowledged the legacy we build on. But some of the early drafts felt like it boxed us in: respecting the history of the paper is one thing, but we need room for bold experiments. Ultimately, the FT has always been distinct, and so far this has proven to be one of our more resonant principles.
Living our principles
It doesn’t take long for posters to fade into the background (especially when you work remotely). We had to find some simple ways of weaving them into the fabric of how we work.
We’re emoji-forward, so Emms made tiny versions of their illustrations for Slack. Every day you’ll see flurries of them greeting updates from across the company.
We’ve also baked them into Show & Tell. Every fortnight an award goes to the team that best embodies one of the principles. By rotating through them, teams come away thinking about how to bring a new emphasis to their own work.
That’s the important bit. These principles will resonate for different teams at different times. Because we talk about each principle often, we’ve turned vague conversations about ‘good’ into specific, actionable ones.
Principles help us make decisions
These five principles have become prompts that teams use to make decisions about what to do. As Chief Product Officer, they’ve become a core part of how I think about what to invest in (and what not to).
I’ve sat in on project kick-offs where people have asked ‘How will we make this Provably brilliant?’. That question has helped a team think about which metrics actually speak to an idea’s quality. I’ve seen similar things happen with every principle over the last six months.
All of those conversations have been more valuable than ‘What does good look like?’. They’re an excellent foundation to help each team develop high-quality products.
