Solving Prioritization
Why better management, not less, is key to any product organization? because a great product strategy can solve most of all your prioritization issues!
Many Agile transformations failed to empower teams to work more efficiently and adaptively, but why? A key factor is that they often bypass the essential input from middle and upper management. While many agile practitioners promote self-managed teams and distance themselves from management, observing the most innovative teams in the world teaches us another lesson: the most agile teams benefit from better management, not less management.
This doesn't mean the situation is better for organizations implementing the product operating model! Most product leaders—those managing product managers, designers, and developers—misunderstand their roles in the product operating model. Their traditional approach of relying on a "roadmap of high-level features" for the upcoming year is often mistaken for strategy. Such roadmaps are usually ineffective and can be a significant waste of time.
A proper product strategy has nothing to do with features. It involves deeply understanding customer needs, market dynamics, and a clear vision of the product's evolution. It relies on validated insights and paves the way toward product success. Product strategy identifies the problems to solve and the sequence to achieve the product vision. Consequently, a fascinating benefit of a well-crafted product strategy is its ability to make prioritization issues... disappear! When a company has a solid strategic foundation, team decisions are no longer about which ideas, initiatives, and features to pursue but about the best way to solve the problem identified and prioritized by the product strategy owned by the product leader.
If you struggle with prioritization as a product manager or leader, it's likely not a problem with your framework, bandwidth, or stakeholders. Instead, it signifies a deeper issue: a weak product strategy. Poor strategy leads to short-term thinking and focus on output instead of outcomes. The root cause of these prioritization challenges is an insufficient understanding of the sequence of problems to solve to achieve the product vision.
To address this, product leaders must shift their focus from creating roadmaps to developing robust product strategies. This involves deep knowledge about your customers, product, and organization. It also consists in combining key insights to highlight a path toward the product vision. By doing so, product leaders can ensure that their teams truly focus on figuring out the best product and features to put in customers' hands instead of juggling with an infinite number of "top priority" tasks to implement.
In conclusion, adopting the product operating model requires more from management than Agile transformations. It demands a leadership shift that includes significant contributions from managers and leaders. By developing a solid product strategy, tech companies can overcome prioritization challenges and create innovative products that customers will love.