Processes in the product team. We explain it with simple examples.

Building processes in a product team, People Management.

People Management literally translates as “people management”. Any team needs it: if there is no management and a normal organization inside, employees feel out of place, deadlines are disrupted, there is no development or very little. Good management helps to prevent this.

People Management is about how to assemble a product team so that people understand the value of tasks, feel responsible, work with motivation and coherence. This is the only way sustainable development is possible: with clear deadlines and high employee engagement.

1. What is a product team

Before you organize a product team, you need to understand what it is in general. The simplest definition is a group of employees who create a certain product. Some believe that a number of clarifications should be added to the definition:

team members are united by one goal and motivation;

they are responsible for what they do;

through the product, the team influences the overall state of the company’s business.

The effectiveness of the group is determined by product metrics. As a rule, we are talking about IT products, so the team usually includes developers, designers, testers, marketers and other employees. They are managed by a product manager: he is also responsible for the product.

2. Features of building processes

We divide the work zones.

In most large companies, the principle applies: do not blame everything on the same people. Teams are divided by areas of responsibility, and this division may be different depending on the specifics of the company:

by directions. Each team is responsible for its own direction: for example, one works with the website version for business partners, the other with the version for private clients;

by type. There are two main groups — Core and Growth. The core is the main part of the product, which practically does not change, only is maintained and improved. Growth is experimentation: new functions and opportunities;

by the type of values, by certain metrics, etc.

There may be subgroups within groups: the fragmentation depends on the size of the company. Small organizations sometimes manage 1–2 teams, in large firms their number reaches dozens.

We check remote employees.

Remote work is good. The pandemic has shown that in IT and related areas, “remote” does not worsen productivity, but, on the contrary, increases it. If an office developer, having studied, can go abroad and leave the company, then it is not necessary for a remote person to change jobs, and he can program comfortably.

So you should not require a mandatory office from employees if you have the opportunity to build processes remotely. You can monitor remote employees:

using Slack and other services. They show how much time a person spent at work, when he left for lunch, etc.;

through personal communication. You can write to employees from time to time and check how quickly they respond. Whether a person stays in touch is an indicator of whether it is worth keeping him on the “remote”;

with the help of meetings and rallies. The team can meet somewhere in person or in video chats if some employees live in other cities.

We hold rallies.

This is the name of team-wide meetings where employees tell what they have done over the past period of time, what tasks they are currently working on, what caused difficulties, and what, on the contrary, was easy.

The culture of workers’ meetings helps to share what is happening and better understand what is happening in the team — and all employees are in the know.

We develop employees.

In a team where all employees are experienced old-timers, most often there is no life. The management also includes improving efficiency. Let more advanced employees patronize others, train newcomers, share their experience.

New employees, in turn, check their work with mentors. An effective product team is always interconnected. This is not just a group of people working on a common project: team members understand the values and goals of what they are doing and try to act harmoniously. And the product manager is obliged to achieve this coherence and comfort for everyone.

We look at successful cases.

There are many examples of large companies on the Internet that tell how they built a product team. For example, representatives of Lamoda, Avito, and Spotify from abroad told about this.

According to the cases, it can be seen that companies are trying to adhere to the principles listed here: the distribution of areas of responsibility, general meetings, a departure from dogmatism. The effectiveness of this approach is also visible in the product: all the listed companies occupy leading positions in the market.

In product and project management, the main thing is to take into account the specifics of the product. This should be understood so that building a product team is effective, and employees feel in their place and can develop.

It is necessary to listen to people, to catch their needs, to take into account the peculiarities and competencies. Therefore, People Management is a complex but interesting industry. And the most important thing here is empathy and the ability to understand people.