As a product manager, you have a crucial role in translating the company's mission and vision into innovative and valuable products. But how do you ensure that your product R&D aligns with the strategic direction and goals of the organization? Here are some best practices to follow.
Before you dive into the what and the how of product R&D, you need to understand the why. What is the purpose and the impact of your product? How does it align with the company's mission and vision? How does it solve a real problem or create a meaningful opportunity for your customers? By answering these questions, you can define your product vision and communicate it clearly to your stakeholders, team, and users.
Aligning product R&D with a company's mission and vision involves applying first principles thinking. Firstly, clearly define the fundamental objectives of the company's mission and vision. Identify the core problems or opportunities that the company seeks to address or leverage. Then, assess how the product being developed directly contributes to these fundamental goals. Ensure that every aspect of the product's design, features, and functionality aligns with and advances the company's overarching mission and vision. By breaking down the mission into its fundamental elements and building the product from these foundational principles, a more cohesive alignment between product R&D and the company's broader objectives is achieved.
The best way to get started is to think with a first-principles approach -- you need to make sure you have a clear understanding of the company's mission and vision and make sure the same is true with your product R & D division. Next, you must define specific goals and experiments for a specific project. What's most important is to define what not to do when you're working on a project. Defining problems that fall out of scope for your project keeps the team aligned on the core problem they set out to solve. Having a clear, concise roadmap that's aligned with your company's vision and excludes everything that falls out of scope can drive a lot of innovation and experimentation.
Product R&D should follow the Product Strategy and Road Map, which in turn should be directed by the company's mission, vision and corporate strategy. So, if the process is followed correctly, the mission should cascade down into product development. However, it is easy to lose sight of this in the face of annual financial targets. One way to ensure good alignment with the company's mission is to use scorecards to evaluate potential development projects, which consider not only the business case but also mission/strategic alignment. Other factors that can be considered in this process could be product advantage, market attractiveness, alignment with internal competencies, technical feasibility, and benefit-risk ratio.
In my experience, understanding the ‘why’ behind our R&D efforts goes beyond aligning with the company’s mission; it’s about embedding the company’s core values into every stage of product development. This deep-rooted understanding often leads to products that not only meet market needs but also resonate on a deeper level with our customers, creating a loyal base that feels connected to our core mission.
I like to think of R&D as product managers for the future. Just like regular (for the present) product managers, one of the most important things to do is to talk to potential customers and users. If R&D, product, sales and marketing are all in regular contact with actual and prospective customers, alignment tends to come naturally.
Product R&D is not a solo activity. You need to collaborate with different people across the organization, such as executives, engineers, designers, marketers, salespeople, and customer support. Each of them has a different perspective and expertise that can help you shape your product and align it with the company's objectives. You also need to involve your customers and users, who are the ultimate beneficiaries of your product. By getting their feedback and insights, you can validate your assumptions and deliver value faster.
When I consider involving the right people, I look beyond technical skills or experience. I curate a team that embodies diverse perspectives and embodies our company’s culture. This diversity often leads to innovative solutions that a more homogeneous group might never consider, thus aligning our R&D efforts with our mission in unexpected ways.
As a Product Manager, you are the captain of the ship. You are managing crew members who might not be right in front of you. You have to attract the right people to move the ship in the right direction. To attract great people, in the course of fulfilling career goals, build relationships from community-led training programmes and networking events. When you meet engineers, designers and sales experts, share in their goals. This would help you find great talent faster.
Define clear goals, a timeline, and expectations from each team member. Define the scope of stakeholders you want to work with, based on their knowledge, power within the company, and resources. Check if they are available and willing to contribute to your project. Set up a brainstorming meeting where you will receive feedback about your project. It is possible that you will need additional stakeholders in your project
Product R&D is not a solo activity. You need to collaborate with different people across the organization, such as executives, engineers, designers, marketers, salespeople, and customer support. Each of them has a different perspective and expertise that can help you shape your product and align it with the company's objectives. You also need to involve your customers and users, who are the ultimate beneficiaries of your product. By getting their feedback and insights, you can validate your assumptions and deliver value faster.
Once you have a clear product vision, you need to break it down into specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals. These goals will help you prioritize your product R&D activities, track your progress, and evaluate your results. They will also help you align your product R&D with the company's strategic goals and KPIs, and show how your product contributes to them. You can use frameworks like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) or GIST (Goals, Ideas, Steps, Tasks) to define and manage your product goals.
Be realistic in setting your goals, be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) enough to define the journey from point A to B and back it up with metrics that you can measure and at the same time by adopting to dynamic approach, we have the opportunity to personalize our trajectory and consistently fine-tune our alignment with the long-term vision of our company.
Aligning product R&D with the company's broader vision starts with setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals ?? and embedding the organizational ethos directly into the development process ?? This approach not only streamlines product development ??? but also ensures that every breakthrough, every feature, every release is a step towards realizing the company's vision. ??
Setting SMART goals is standard; however, I’ve found that the realignment of these goals at regular intervals to reflect the evolving market and internal learnings keeps the team agile and focused. This dynamic approach can shift our trajectory in ways that continuously refine our alignment with the company’s long-term vision.
Once you have a clear product vision, you need to break it down into specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals. These goals will help you prioritize your product R&D activities, track your progress, and evaluate your results. They will also help you align your product R&D with the company's strategic goals and KPIs, and show how your product contributes to them. You can use frameworks like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) or GIST (Goals, Ideas, Steps, Tasks) to define and manage your product goals.
Product R&D is not a linear process. It involves uncertainty, ambiguity, and risk. You can't rely on assumptions or opinions alone. You need to test your ideas and hypotheses with real data and evidence. You need to experiment and learn from your failures and successes. You need to iterate and improve your product based on your learnings. By adopting a lean and agile mindset, you can align your product R&D with the company's mission and vision, and adapt to changing customer needs and market conditions.
In the realm of experimentation, I’ve learned to value failures as much as successes. By fostering a culture where learning from failures is celebrated, the team is encouraged to take calculated risks, leading to breakthroughs that can propel our products to align closely with our mission and vision.
A team truly needs to put in a lot of ideas, test for viability and achieved performance, then stress test to ensure reliability. Being able to quickly assess ideas with a real world trial is key to 'failing fast' and narrowing ideas down to those with potential. Once you get a solid base of ideas that show promise, then take a bit more time to build a comparison experiment to select the ideal ones that achieve your goals. Don't discard the weaker ones though, as sometimes these can become even better ideas in future iterations.
Always consider R&D experiments as a way to: - Inform product strategy - Prioritize initiatives in the product roadmap - Test things as quickly as possible Here's what I would recommend: Create a quick landing page with a no-code website builder, or even use an existing website template. Run ads to generate leads and encourage sign-ups. Speak with these leads to validate your idea. Utilize no-code tools like Bubble and Glide app to create a basic functional product without involving developers and designers. Test this with existing users. This is the best way to validate product R&D ideas with minimal effort and time
Product R&D is not a linear process. It involves uncertainty, ambiguity, and risk. You can't rely on assumptions or opinions alone. You need to test your ideas and hypotheses with real data and evidence. You need to experiment and learn from your failures and successes. You need to iterate and improve your product based on your learnings. By adopting a lean and agile mindset, you can align your product R&D with the company's mission and vision, and adapt to changing customer needs and market conditions.
Product R&D is not a one-time event. It is a continuous journey that requires constant communication and celebration. You need to share your product vision, goals, experiments, learnings, and achievements with your stakeholders, team, and users. You need to solicit feedback, input, and support from them. You need to celebrate your milestones, wins, and learnings. By communicating and celebrating your product R&D, you can foster alignment, engagement, and trust within the organization and beyond.
With every delivery, when posting on it internally within the company, I shout-out the developers, designers and others who contributed to this development. I try to describe their contribution - both on the technical side and their "human" side. I find this to be a process that helps us working well together, as people feel that they are seen.
Product R&D affects more teams than one can imagine. From product success teams to customer support teams to product engineering teams to sales teams, everyone needs to be well informed of the product upgrades. Why communicate? These customer facing teams need such information to handle grievances, amplify product adoption and define USPs for potential customers. How to communicate? These internal stakeholders may not be as tech-savvy as you. Ensure internal comms to facilitate seamless knowledge transfer: product release demos, internal office hours to address questions and welcome feedback, collaborating with client-facing teams to understand the impact of the R&D on the end users. Keep such teams involved in your product roadmap.
While Product Managers are expected to be well-versed into the "business" side of the company, it is important to remember that the rest of the organization may not see the connection of the company's goals to your product. Be proactive: communicate the connection of the top goals with the reason-for-being of your product to the broader team - engineering, design, marketing, etc.
Celebrating successes in a "never-done" SaaS environment can be tricky, but crucial! Recognition fuels motivation, fosters commitment, and builds a culture of continuous improvement. Emphasize how each accomplishment contributes to the company's overall mission and vision. This helps employees feel part of something larger and reinforces the purpose of their work. Gather feedback on how effective your celebrations are. Do they feel genuine? Do they motivate employees? Use this feedback to refine your approach and make celebrations even more impactful. Finally, Celebrate customer success stories alongside internal achievements. Feature testimonials, showcase case studies, and express gratitude for their ongoing feedback and partnership.
Communicating and celebrating successes is common, but I’ve found that recognizing effort and learning in public forums can be just as important. This approach reinforces a culture of continuous improvement and collective achievement, which is instrumental in driving our R&D to deliver on our company’s vision.
To align product R&D with a company's mission and vision, it's crucial to ensure that goals and priorities resonate with the overarching company strategy. R&D should focus on solving customer problems in line with the company’s mission. Emphasizing a market-driven approach, rather than being purely technology-focused, ensures that development efforts are directed toward creating value for customers and fulfilling the company's strategic objectives.
Host a hackathon to make building product R&D projects more enjoyable and collaborative by inviting everyone on your team. The best projects and new initiatives often emerge from internal hackathons with cross-functional collaborations.
First of all let's get the company's mission and vision clear in the team's mind. With "clear" I mean not just on paper but in their heads and souls too. Then let's create a roadmap and communicate how that aligns with the vision and mission. There should be a constant check whether the RnD's efforts are going in the expected directions, if not reiterate, with the gaps and expectations emphasized.
To align product R&D with the company's mission and vision: Understand the 'Why': Clearly articulate how the product addresses customer needs and aligns with the company's mission. Set Shared Goals: Create objectives and key results (OKRs) that link product outcomes to company aspirations. Involve Leadership: Ensure executives endorse and understand the product's role in the company's future. Continuous Communication: Regularly discuss alignment and progress with stakeholders. Customer-Centric Approach: Always tie R&D efforts back to customer value and mission impact. Flexibility and Adaptation: Be prepared to pivot based on strategic shifts or insights.
ProdMs do not start a journey to do R&D, instead, R&D happens to be a need to achieve a company goal. Therefore the best way to align product R&D with company mission and vision, is through aligning the goals overall. Company goal is the vision, you need to execute a mission to reach that goal, and the solution's R&D is generally a sub-task in that mission. Clarifying the big picture for all shareholders, showing it as a roadmap on paper, and aligning with stakeholders, especially with engineering, would be the best way to start. OKR can be used to create a collaboration-based system. RICE can be used to prioritize all R&D tasks to achieve team goals in OKR, on time.