What’s the best way to focus teams on outcomes not outputs?
I’m asked questions about product management from time to time. Here’s one I’ve answered recently:
What’s the best way to help agile teams move away from feature delivery to focus on outcomes not outputs?
From my experience, the elephant in the room seems to often be we don’t know enough about the problem and we haven’t done enough research. The team is eager to build stuff and are clearly worried about the unknown of the discovery process.
How can we get better at doing research to find opportunities in an agile environment?
D
Some suggestions:
Each week, go (with your team if at all possible) and have open chats with your users about how your product fits into their lives. It would be rare not to come back with at least one insight that changed your perspective.
With permission, record your users using your product in their real-life context (i.e. not in a lab) to see where they make mistakes, get frustrated or simply have to work around your product’s workflow to get what they need done.
Take those human responses to heart – both you and your team.
Decide as a team how you’re going to take some of that stress and hassle out of your users’ lives.
Figure out what you’re going to try first, and put it on your product backlog. Check whether it worked.
Now you’re working towards outcomes.
Read more from Jock
The Practitioner's Guide To Product Management
by Jock Busuttil
“This is a great book for Product Managers or those considering a career in Product Management.”
— Lyndsay Denton
Jock Busuttil is a product management and leadership coach, product leader and author. He has spent over two decades working with technology companies to improve their product management practices, from startups to multinationals. In 2012 Jock founded Product People Limited, which provides product management consultancy, coaching and training. Its clients include BBC, University of Cambridge, Ometria, Prolific and the UK’s Ministry of Justice and Government Digital Service (GDS). Jock holds a master’s degree in Classics from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the popular book The Practitioner’s Guide To Product Management, which was published in January 2015 by Grand Central Publishing in the US and Piatkus in the UK. He writes the blog I Manage Products and weekly product management newsletter PRODUCTHEAD. You can find him on Mastodon, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Leave a Reply