How a Charter helped Motivate and Align our Product Development team đź‘Š
Why do we need empowered product development teams?
Building exceptional products is hard work. And in order to build exceptional products, it is incredibly important to get the most out of the collective product development team’s skills and abilities. We need to leverage the knowledge, experience, and creativity from the collective group of people (such as product, engineering, design) building our products.
Having an empowered development team and culture is how we get the best from everyone to create value for users and for the company here at Student Beans.
Why create a charter? Our Intention ✏️
In order to solidify our empowered product development culture, we produced a written charter that reflects our principles and values around how we strive to work. The intention of this charter was to set out the expectations of the product development team and our respective disciplines in how we approach alignment and autonomy in our work. We share this charter with new people who join our team and use it as a touchstone to reflect on how the ways in which we are working can be improved.
How did we create our charter? đź’ˇ
Feedback & Collaboration
We worked as a cross functional team with members from different parts of our product development function which included product, design, and engineering. We also coordinated across the leadership spectrum, including our CEO, to reflect on our values and make our intentions clear.
Inspiration of charter
We studied up on this topic from thought leaders in this space. The inspiration for much of our charter comes from Marty Cagan and his book Empowered, and also Adam Grant from his book Think Again. Marty Cagan’s work on shaping the product manager role and how to create empowered teams has inspired this charter and how we operate at Student Beans. We also took inspiration from other successful product teams’ cultures, such as Netflix, Google, and Spotify.
The Product Development Charter đź“ś
The purpose of our product development team is “to serve the users in ways users love, yet work for the business.” — Marty Cagan
What is the product development team?
One team committed to results
We are all responsible for the output for our teams. We take ownership of hard problems or new opportunities and do our best to deliver the best outcomes for users and for the business. Our performance is measured by our results.
“Teams of missionaries are engaged, motivated, have a deep understanding of the business context, and tangible empathy for the customer. Teams of mercenaries feel no real sense of empowerment or accountability, no passion for the problem to be solved, and little real connection with the actual users and customers.” — Marty Cagan
How do we work?
We think like scientists
“We treat our strategy as a hypothesis and our product as an experiment. We value humility over pride, questioning over conviction and openness, and curiosity over closure. Instead of starting with the answers, we lead with questions, and see where the inquiry leads” — Adam Grant
Transparency & openness
We are open and forthcoming with our work. We share our objectives, seek feedback, and keep everyone updated about the value we are creating. We learn from what we’ve done, good or bad, and share that information freely so we can grow and develop as a team!
What do we need to do to be successful in our work?
Autonomy
We operate in a manner that creates openness, alignment, and accountability. We believe in agile principles to allow us to work in this way. It is our aim to have the necessary resources available to do our jobs in the best way possible but understand the need to collaborate across teams and stretch beyond our core skills to get the work done.
Accountability
We hold ourselves accountable for our work and aim to set expectations and have the highest impact. When we take on a project we are clear with the current state, what the future will look like once we have been successful, and hold ourselves accountable for those outcomes. We take calculated risks and aren’t afraid of failure. When we do fail we address those moments openly as learning opportunities.
“The Framing of a problem is often far more essential than its solution.” — Albert Einstein
Responsibility
To build great products, we must ensure our products are Valuable, Viable, Usable, and Feasible. Collectively we must ensure our products create the best value for our users and the business.
Product
It is the product lead’s job to think like an owner and take responsibility for users, the product team, stakeholders, and leadership. The product lead must provide the necessary strategic context to come up with the best possible outcomes. That context includes knowledge and information on users, data, business, and the industry. But above all, Product must be clear with intent, and always explain the why behind the what.
Design
As product designers, we create great experiences for our users by continuously collaborating with product managers and engineers, participating in all phases of a product, from discovery to delivery to iteration. Like product managers, we are deeply oriented around actual users and the value our product is bringing to those users while understanding how the product is in service to the business. We are responsible for holistic experience design, including a broad understanding of the user journey and how users interact with the product and our company as a whole. As good designers, we understand and implement user testing and prototyping as well as interaction and visual design.
Engineering
As engineers, on top of building great products to serve our users, we are accountable for our technology and we aim to build and run a world class platform to serve those users. We take ownership of our technology and services. We run our platforms to a high standard of performance with clear metrics. We continuously maintain our platform to allow for growth and scale. We provide technical leadership and support strategy and discovery work to ensure feasibility throughout the development process.
Final Thoughts 🌳
Making our intentions clear on how we work has helped our teams become more aligned and feel empowered to serve our users. It has also shaped our culture and impacts who we hire into the business and how we set them up for success in the organisation. We also leverage OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to drive accountability and alignment, giving our teams clear responsibility to drive towards successful outcomes and impact, but more to come on that topic later…
What has helped you to motivate your teams and build an empowered culture?
