Unlocking Productivity: How to set Effective Context for a 10x Team Performance Boost
As an experienced product manager, I've found that providing the right context to my team boosts productivity tenfold. When team members understand the user perspective and can make informed decisions autonomously, it significantly reduces the need for constant oversight. This, in turn, allows me to focus more on future discovery and strategic aspects of the work, rather than getting bogged down in day-to-day details. In this blog post, I'll share insights into why context matters and guide you through the process of running a workshop to set the context effectively.
Why Setting Context Matters
Imagine setting off on a collaborative journey where everyone of the members of the crew knew how to operate their specific part of car but you were the only one with the map or the destination in mind, constantly having to course correct if things go astray which diverts your attention from planning the next part of the trip. It's not a pleasant thought, is it? Seems quite inefficient to be the only one who knows where the group is going. The same applies to product development. Without well-defined context set, your team may wander aimlessly, leading to misunderstandings, misaligned efforts, and, ultimately, suboptimal outcomes.
Here's why setting context is so important:
1. Alignment: Context unites your team behind a shared vision and goal. It aligns everyone to the same objectives, reducing ambiguity and fostering a sense of purpose.
2. Clarity: Setting context clarifies the 'what' and 'why' of a project/product/sprint/feature. Team members understand not only what needs to be done but also why it needs to be done, making their work more meaningful.
3. Empowerment: Context empowers team members to make informed decisions. They can use the context to guide their choices, solve problems, and innovate within set boundaries.
4. Efficiency: With context in place, there's less back-and-forth communication to resolve questions or uncertainties. This efficiency accelerates project progress.
5. Quality: A well-set context aids in producing high-quality outcomes by ensuring that the team's efforts are in sync with the overarching strategy.
Running a Context-Setting Workshop
A great analogy I like to use for this is the story of the blind men and the elephant. If your team has a fun mascot you can replace the title of the workshop with “See the [Mascot Name]”. Now that we understand why context is vital, let's delve into how to run a workshop to establish it effectively. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to run your workshop:
Pre-work
Define the Workshop's Purpose: Clearly state the objectives of the workshop. What context needs to be established, and what specific goals are you trying to achieve?
Identify Key Stakeholders: Invite all the relevant parties, including developers, designers, product team members, implementers, sales teams, customer support and any other contributors. Ensure representation from each department or role involved in the project.
Prepare the Content: Collect and organize all the information necessary to set the context. This may include market research, user insights, business goals, and technical requirements. This can often take the most of YOUR time but is so worth it in the end. This can be your source of truth as you build, I love to use a Product Narrative for these workshops.
Agenda and Structure: Outline a structured agenda for the workshop. Ensure it covers the 'what' and 'why' of the project, the target audience, user needs, technical constraints, and the desired outcome.
Depending on how much time you have you may need to do this over a couple of sessions.
Things you will need to accomplish:
Send out your product narrative ahead of time - likely people won’t have had time to read so give them that time here.
Ultilize a collaboration tool for people to make specific comments in that document and ask questions - I love google docs
Go through and answer everyones questions in the document, make sure you record all questions and answers so that when new folks see the document and have similar questions they can see the answers/decisions that were made.
Now its time to get people into work mode. Take time to define your MVP together, keep note of “out-of-scope” ideas/features for a future consideration but in order to test sooner focus on making only the essentials.
Once you define the MVP have your Product designers go into a quick research and sketch mode for the UX. Have your technical leads start to spec out architecture and write some technical stories.
Bring the MVP user stories, UX sketches & technical architecture together to talk about the dependencies between each one.
Develop a plan that includes sequence of work, timing and level of effort on implementation
Finally document all this in your product narrative so that anyone can refer back to it. This is now a nice piece of work that can be prioritized by the Product Management team.
Note: be sure to facilitate the discussion to stay on track, manage time, and encourage participation. Incorporate interactive activities to engage participants when possible. These might include brainstorming sessions, group discussions, or role-playing exercises to explore various scenarios. Leverage online tools like MIRO when you can’t be in person.
When you are done record the key takeaways and decisions made during the workshop. Ensure that this documentation is accessible to all team members. As you continue to develop and challenge assumptions update your product narrative so that it continues to be the contextual source of truth.
Conclusion: Context is Key
In the dynamic world of product management, setting context is not a one-time task but an ongoing practice. I've seen firsthand how the ability to establish context can transform a team's efficiency, collaboration, and, ultimately, the success of a product. By writing clear product narratives, running context-setting workshops and maintaining a clear, shared vision, you pave the way for your team to navigate their product development journey with confidence and purpose.