Throw Less Spaghetti, Make More Stick by Devan Goldstein [Mind the Product]

When growth work looks like product work, growth-team problems look like product-team problems. In this ProductTank San Francisco talk, Devan Goldstein, then Growth Product Lead at Dropbox, shows us how using product themes can help to focus growth teams.

Watch the video to see his talk in full. Or read on for an overview of his key points:

• How growth teams and product teams should work together
• Operationalizing product themes

How Growth Teams and Product Teams Should Work Together

Product teams and growth teams should be working together to focus the overall team strategy. In a young growth team, it’s not always clear that a product strategy, target metrics or resources need to be more focused. These teams tend to be high-velocity experimentation teams. This results in an approach of simply throwing ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks. In an older growth team, there is more optimization and balance and focus on specific metrics. For a high experimentation team, a product theme allows for a more problem-shaped broader scope area to focus on that allows for ideation, research and shippable code. This helps to build knowledge faster and keep un-roadmapped experimentation grounded.

Operationalizing Product Themes

Product themes should not be just made up. They should be created by documenting what is done as a product team and considering a few factors, including research sources, preliminary hypotheses and risks/blockers. Also it helps teams to stay focused and conveys things further up in the leadership chain.

The key takeaways are to understand that product themes have a life cycle. They fulfil the goals of other product strategies but allow for added flexibility that can prove useful for experimentation teams. Teams should commit to using product themes but adapt to changes in the environment and learnings. Themes provide focus, grounding and accountability for high experimentation product teams.

The post Throw Less Spaghetti, Make More Stick by Devan Goldstein appeared first on Mind the Product.

Source: Mind the Product https://www.mindtheproduct.com/throw-less-spaghetti-make-more-stick-by-devan-goldstein/