EMPOWERED

CHAPTER 50Actions

Continuing with the series on product strategy, in this chapter we need to leverage our insights into action.

At this point, we have focused on a very small number of critical problems, and we have done the hard work to identify the key insights that will power our product strategy. Now we need to turn these insights into action, but there are two ways to do this.

This is the point where there's a fork in the road, and it's where we can tell if a company is serious about empowered product teams or is still addicted to feature teams.

I need to admit here that even if the company chooses to stay with roadmaps and feature teams, they are still far better off if they have a strong product strategy. Certainly, much better than the majority of organizations with feature teams that have no product strategy.

The difference really boils down to whether you give your product teams features to build, or problems to solve.

Most of the time the difference is obvious (e.g., “Add videos to our online help offering” vs. “Improve the new‐user onboarding success rate”). But sometimes the difference is more nuanced (e.g., “We need an app” vs. “Our users need to be able to access our services from anywhere”).

In the first example, adding videos is just one of probably hundreds of possible improvements to new‐user onboarding.

In the second example, adding an app is very likely to be the primary way of providing access from anywhere, so the difference is subtle, but there are still ...