How to align your teams

A well-defined Product Process increases your products time to market while providing value to users and improving product quality.

The concept of a cross-functional team is well known to almost everyone; however, for many people, it is more of a conceptual framework than a reality. We were introduced to the concept of "three in a box" while working at PayPal. It was revolutionary for me at the time. Writing 60-page-long, fully defined product requirements documents that ended up in my or some engineers' desk drawers and were rarely built in reality changed my relationship with product management.

Since then, I've worked in a broad range of environments that allowed me to see good and bad examples of great product processes that hindered or fostered great collaborations and thus had a direct impact on an organization’s alignment, speed, and success.

Step 1 - A mapped process.

Have you ever heard of the Double Diamond concept? The two diamonds represent the processes of delving deeper into an issue (divergent thinking) and then taking focused action (convergent thinking).Given that a designer rarely works alone, but rather as part of a Product and Engineering team, it is critical to understand how the work of a design team is embedded in the work of product managers and engineers.

If this is documented, discussed, and agreed upon, your team is well-positioned for success ( assuming continuous iterations and learning).

But how are you going to do it? Doodle considers the process from the very top—the vision and strategy—to the very bottom—the release and measurement of the delivered solutions.

This is a bird's-eye view of the process.

What you see is that defining a clear vision and strategy is embedded into the whole process to ensure teams and actions are aligned and direction is given. And while this looks like a pretty straightforward process, let’s be realistic: it is not and it will never be. Each feature is different. Some are small, some big. Some are well defined, some are not. Some appear to be technically feasible at first but turn out to be 10 times more complex than expected. Sometimes you figure out that you’ve built the wrong thing while you are building it.

Taking the above into consideration, it might look like this:

If you now match all of this with the reality of Product, Design and Engineering it is pretty obvious that the process itself can come in many different flavors. and rarely does one feature equal another.

So why should we even care if there is no “one size fits all” approach? Because once you map the stages of the process, you will see that all of your initiatives touch all of the phases. Sometimes it takes longer; sometimes it is just a very short touch point. Based on your organizational setup, your research, define phase, and validation phase might not be as sophisticated as you’d wish they would be. But even if it not there yet today or only very rudimentary, that’s fine. Mapping it, will help you uncovering this as well.

Once the map is created, I recommend reviewing it with each and every member of your design, engineering, and product teams (or, even better, including your CX, data, sales, and marketing). That appears to be a lot of work. Yes, it is. Will you be done in a week? No! Is it worth it? Yes.

Step 2 - A process only works in combination with accountabilities.

The process is mapped, and everyone is able to agree on the key steps to follow? Great. Now it is time to spin the collaboration wheel. When and how much involvement is required? Mapping this will help you to make sure everyone understands their role and level of involvement and it is a great starting point to break the siloed work that many companies suffer from.

This might look like this (although roles and titles differ in each company).

Step 3 - Define the details

This is the step that will require the most effort and a lot of back and forth. It is also the step that never ends because it necessitates constant review and incorporation of your most recent learning. The details might look like this or even messier!

Things to keep in mind in this last step of the journey.

While this all looks great on paper it is really challenging in reality and requires a lot of attention to make it work.

• Define who owns and drives the process. It is not enough to just write it down once. Someone needs to feel accountable for it.

• Make sure everyone has a shared understanding of the definition and understanding of all frameworks, tools and words. When working with an Opportunity Canvas make sure everyone understands what an opportunity is.

• A “Definition of done” sounds great in theory but if is not written down and agreed upon it is useless.

• Review this. Again and again. Use a few recent features to review if they fit into the process or if the process needs to be changed.

• The sign off phase is crucial and needs the most attention. Only if design, engineering and product agree on what is needed to move a work item from one stage to another and stick to it, the process will help your teams to succeed.

Summary and some questions I would ask if I were you.

Are you really working this way?

Yes, in my current company we do, and I used a similar process with a slightly different flavor in another company. I failed twice in another setup, and learned from this as well. I will share more about the success factors in other posts.

How long will it take to implement it?

This is hard to determine. This depends on your organization’s willingness to make it work and get it implemented, and on the maturity of the team to align on it and work with it. But realistically, until it is really "flowing,” it might take a year, but you will generate small wins already along the journey.

Can any company adopt this?

Honestly, I don’t think so. If your company does not yet have a well defined vision, is not doing any research, or lacks the basics of great cross team collaboration, you might need to start there first.

Am I done, when it is implemented?

No. This process is one of several artifacts that we use in our teams. It comes along with a great tool that helps us to track every item from Vision to Strategy, to design, to build, to measure.It is embedded in a well defined planning and alignment process and accompanied by meetings and communication structures that help to keep everyone up to date.

How do I even get started?

If the task feels too big, start small. Choose one team that is eager to make a change. Start by mapping their process and taking it from there. The goal is not to have the process picture perfect documented. The goal is to help your teams to constantly learn and improve and to remove friction from your day to day work by standardizing repeating tasks.