Good Product Teams vs. Bad Product Teams: Lessons from the Best in the World

I've had the extremely good fortune to work with many of the best technology product teams in the world—the people creating the products you use and love every day, teams that are literally changing the world. I've also been brought in to try to help with companies that are not doing so well. Startups racing to get some traction before the money runs out. Larger companies struggling to replicate their early innovation. Teams failing to continuously add value to their business. Leaders frustrated with how long it takes to go from idea to reality. Engineers exasperated with their product managers.

What I've learned is that there is a profound difference between how the very best product companies create technology products and all the rest. And I don't mean minor differences. Everything from how the leaders behave to the level of empowerment of teams to how the organization thinks about funding, staffing, and producing products, down to how product, design, and engineering collaborate to discover effective solutions for their customers.

With a grateful nod to Ben Horowitz's classic post "Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager," for those that have not yet had the opportunity to participate in or observe a strong product team up close, in this post, I provide you with a glimpse into some of the important differences between strong product teams and weak teams.

1. Vision and Passion

Good teams have a compelling product vision that they pursue with a missionary-like passion. Bad teams are mercenaries. They lack a clear, compelling vision and are driven more by orders and directives than by a shared passion for their product.

2. Source of Inspiration

Good teams get their inspiration and product ideas from their vision and objectives, from observing customers' struggles, from analyzing the data customers generate from using their product, and from constantly seeking to apply new technology to solve real problems. Bad teams gather requirements from sales and customers without a deeper understanding of the underlying needs.

3. Stakeholder Understanding

Good teams understand who each of their key stakeholders are, they understand the constraints that these stakeholders operate in, and they are committed to inventing solutions that work not just for users and customers, but also within the constraints of the business. Bad teams gather requirements from stakeholders without a comprehensive understanding of these constraints.

4. Rapid Experimentation

Good teams are skilled in the many techniques to rapidly try out product ideas to determine which ones are truly worth building. Bad teams hold meetings to generate prioritized roadmaps, often leading to analysis paralysis.

5. Collaborative Culture

Good teams love to have brainstorming discussions with smart thought leaders from across the company. Bad teams get offended when someone outside their team dares to suggest they do something.

6. Cross-functional Integration

Good teams have product, design, and engineering sit side by side, and they embrace the give and take between the functionality, the user experience, and the enabling technology. Bad teams sit in their respective silos, and ask that others make requests for their services in the form of documents and scheduling meetings.

7. Innovation and Risk

Good teams are constantly trying out new ideas to innovate, but doing so in ways that protect the revenue and protect the brand. Bad teams are still waiting for permission to run a test.

8. Skill Sets

Good teams insist they have the skill sets on their team, such as strong product design, necessary to create winning products. Bad teams don't even know what product designers are.

9. Engineer Involvement

Good teams ensure that their engineers have time to try out the prototypes in discovery every day so that they can contribute their thoughts on how to make the product better. Bad teams show the prototypes to the engineers during sprint planning so they can estimate.

10. Customer Engagement

Good teams engage directly with end users and customers every week, to better understand their customers, and to see the customer's response to their latest ideas. Bad teams think they are the customer.

11. Iterative Development

Good teams know that many of their favorite ideas won't end up working for customers, and even the ones that could will need several iterations to get to the point where they provide the desired outcome. Bad teams just build what's on the roadmap, and are satisfied with meeting dates and ensuring quality.

12. Speed and Iteration

Good teams understand the need for speed and how rapid iteration is the key to innovation, and they understand this speed comes from the right techniques and not forced labor. Bad teams complain they are slow because their colleagues are not working hard enough.

13. High-integrity Commitments

Good teams make high-integrity commitments after they've evaluated the request and ensured they have a viable solution that will work for the customer and the business. Bad teams complain about being a sales-driven company.

14. Analytics and Reporting

Good teams instrument their work so they can immediately understand how their product is being used and make adjustments based on the data. Bad teams consider analytics and reporting a nice to have.

15. Continuous Integration

Good teams integrate and release continuously, knowing that a constant stream of smaller releases provides a much more stable solution for their customers. Bad teams test manually at the end of a painful integration phase and then release everything at once.

16. Customer Focus

Good teams obsess over their reference customers. Bad teams obsess over their competitors.

17. Celebrating Impact

Good teams celebrate when they achieve a significant impact on the business results. Bad teams celebrate when they finally release something.

If a significant number of these items strike too close to home, I hope you'll consider raising the bar for your team. See if you can't use the techniques in this post to experience the difference.

Conclusion

The difference between good product teams and bad product teams is profound, impacting not only the products they create but the overall success and sustainability of their organizations. By understanding and implementing the practices of successful teams, any organization can elevate its product development process, creating products that truly make a difference for their customers and the world.