Abstraction

Being a product manager is challenging. The role requires an understanding of customers, competitors, market trends, analyst opinions, and technology. It requires an ability to focus on the minute details of product requirements while simultaneously guiding those requirements in support of a high-level strategic vision. Product managers are held responsible for the actions of persons in different cross-functional teams; they are responsible when a product fares poorly, and give accolades to others when things go well.

Successfully managing a product team requires the creation and maintenance of an atmosphere in which product managers can be successful. Primarily, this means fostering a strong sense of collaboration — a certain positive chemistry. Creating an atmosphere in which the team “gels,” working together to ensure the success of all it’s members. It sounds like something of a platitude, I know. But every successful product team with which I’ve ever been involved displayed a strong degree of camaraderie.

To build such a team, I follow a basic rule: I make sure everyone I hire is smarter than I am, and I make sure they are not an asshole. A corollary to the rule: if I make a mistake and hire someone that doesn’t meet either of the two standards, I immediately help that person find a new role in which they will be more successful.

That bears repeating, although it’s the topic of another post: if you make a hiring mistake, address the mistake immediately.

Once the team is built, the challenge is to nurture and grow a team that works together in such a way as the whole is much stronger than the parts. There are many tactics to accomplish this, most of which are rely on physical proximity.

But what if you are building a team that is geographically dispersed? For example, it’s becoming quite common to lead a product team based in India, or to manage a team with members telecommuting from multiple locations worldwide. How to best build a team out of a group of such geographically dispersed people? It’s certainly possible, as is demonstrated by every open source project.

Turns out that there’s no difference between managing a geographically dispersed team and one that sits together in a bullpen. Physical proximity makes managing a team somewhat less challenging in terms of focus and effort, but the rules are the same:

1. You can’t rely exclusively on email, emailed documents, IM, and conference calls to communicate. Nor is it enough to version control documents in a CVS, subversion, or Perforce. There’s nothing wrong with these tools, but you must also implement an online collaboration tool to centralize and track communication across many different time zones. There are many, some suited to particular projects better than others. Basecamp (http://www.basecamphq.com/) is a popular commercial solution, but there are free options ranging from wiki software to combination wiki/tracking systems such as trac (http://trac.edgewall.org/).
2. Make sure people use the collaboration tool. Any tool is ineffective if it’s ignored or (worse) half-used. Getting people to use a new system is difficult; you must be prepared to insist.
3. You must have a clear, specific product strategy. What is the long term strategic goal, the vision, toward which the team is working?
4. You must have a clear, specific set of tactics to meet the goal.
5. You must have a clear idea how each team member will contribute to meeting the various tactical objectives.
6. You must make sure that every team member is clear on all of these messages. Each member of the team must be able to comfortably answer: What is our goal? How are we reaching the goal? What is my role? How will my success be measured?
7. You must carefully, daily, painstakingly, work with each member to ensure they remain clear — not only on the overall vision and tactics, but on their individual contribution.

In a global economy, geographically dispersed teams are more and more common. It takes effort to lead a such a team, but it can be done successfully.