How to set a product team up for success (clue: take a human-centred approach)

Monica Viggars
5 min readJul 28, 2019
How to set a product team up for success — illustration by Ian Viggars

When you’re a Product Manager starting at a new company there is so much to learn — understanding what your team is working on and who your customer is, figuring out who’s who, what the company’s strategic aims are, and so much more.

What often gets forgotten is learning about what makes your team tick and what they need to do a great job.

Some people might disagree with me (and feel free to in the comments!) but my experiences have taught me that being a Product Manager is what I like to call a “human-centred” role, above and beyond being a technical or analytical one. Having some technical knowledge will help you to do the job, but if you don’t have a happy and motivated team that is working well together, there’s far less chance of you being able to deliver great products.

So, what can a Product Manager starting out with a new team do? Here are a few tips from my toolbox to help you get started:

Run a Team Canvas session

Earlier I mentioned understanding what makes your team tick — the Team Canvas is a great way to start to get a handle on this, as well as helping to get your team aligned with one another.

The exercise aims to answer question such as:

What is the team’s purpose?
What are the core values that we share as a team?
What are our common goals as a team?
What are our individual goals, needs and expectations?
Where are we strong and what could stop us from succeeding?

Team Canvas — from http://theteamcanvas.com/

There are two versions of the Team Canvas — the more in-depth version (pictured above) and a basic version that takes less time to complete. I like to use the full version when I’m starting out with a team as it covers individual needs in more detail.

You can read more about how to run the session here.

Once you’ve completed the session, get it written up and saved in a place where your team can access it.

--

--

Monica Viggars

Product Coach. Director @ Rather Good Consultancy: I help make product people awesome! 💫 Writing about the human side of Product Management.