You’re a product development team leader. What do you need to succeed?

1 Vision and Strategy

The first thing you need as a product development leader is a clear and compelling vision of what you want to achieve and why. A vision is a statement that describes the desired future state of your product, its value proposition, and its impact on the customer and the market. A strategy is a plan that outlines how you will get there, what resources you will need, and what challenges you will face. You need to communicate your vision and strategy to your team, stakeholders, and customers, and align them with the overall business objectives and priorities.

3 Team Collaboration

The third thing you need as a product development leader is a high-performing and cohesive team that works well together. You need to recruit, train, and retain talented and diverse people who share your vision and values, and have the right skills and mindset for product development. You need to foster a culture of trust, respect, and feedback, and empower your team to take ownership and responsibility for their work. You need to facilitate effective communication, coordination, and collaboration among your team members and across different functions and departments.

4 Agile Methodology

The fourth thing you need as a product development leader is an agile methodology that enables you to deliver value to your customers quickly and continuously. Agile is a set of principles and practices that emphasize flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness to change. You need to adopt an agile mindset and framework that suits your product context and goals, such as Scrum, Kanban, or Lean. You need to define and prioritize your product backlog, plan and execute your sprints, and review and improve your processes and outcomes.

5 Technical Skills

The fifth thing you need as a product development leader is a solid foundation of technical skills that enable you to understand and oversee the technical aspects of your product. You need to have a basic knowledge of the technologies, tools, and platforms that your product uses, such as programming languages, frameworks, libraries, APIs, databases, cloud services, etc. You need to be able to communicate with your developers, engineers, and testers, and provide them with clear and feasible requirements, specifications, and guidelines. You need to be able to troubleshoot, debug, and optimize your product's functionality, performance, and quality.

6 Leadership Skills

The sixth and final thing you need as a product development leader is a set of leadership skills that enable you to inspire, influence, and motivate your team and stakeholders. You need to have a strong sense of purpose, passion, and curiosity, and a growth mindset that embraces learning and improvement. You need to have a strategic, analytical, and creative thinking, and a problem-solving and decision-making ability. You need to have a communication, presentation, and negotiation skill, and a stakeholder management and relationship building skill. You need to have a self-awareness, self-management, and emotional intelligence skill, and a feedback and coaching skill.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?