What are some of the best practices for managing multiple products and teams?

A strong strategy is crucial for defining new products and features. It aligns development with market needs and customer expectations, ensuring products meet real demands. It helps prioritize features that align with the overall vision and provides clear objectives and measurable metrics for better decision-making. Essentially, a well-crafted strategy is key to creating innovative, relevant, and competitive products.

1. I ensure that every product aligns with our overarching company vision. This creates a sense of purpose and direction, guiding product development and team efforts. 2. For each product, I craft a unique strategy based on its market, customer base, and growth stage, while ensuring it complements our overall business objectives. 3. I define specific, measurable goals for each product, helping teams focus on outcomes that drive progress towards our larger vision. 4. I conduct frequent meetings to align product strategies with the broader vision, ensuring consistency and focus across all teams and products.

When you have multiple Products in portfolio, then key part of defining the vision is that all the products should be mutually exclusive but collaboratively exhaustive. That should be the primary goal so that we can address any customer need in the market segment of our choice. An exercise like that also helps us in building Product specific features. When we will have MECE approach, we would be able to define, measure and develop Product and it's metrics in an efficient manner

1.Communication: Ensure that every team member knows their roles, responsibilities, and deadlines for each product. 2.Goals: Establish SMART goals for each product and team. 3. Project management: Leverage project management tools to track progress, manage tasks, and collaborate effectively. 4. Collaboration: Promote teamwork across different teams to leverage diverse skills and perspectives. 5. Review and adjust: Continually review the progress of each team and product, and make adjustments as needed to ensure goals are being met. 6. Training and support: Equip teams with necessary skills and knowledge to manage their products effectively. 7. Value feedback: Encourage teams to give and receive feedback to continually improve product .

Product strategy sits in between the overall company vision & strategy, and the product roadmap. It is intended to serve as directional guard rails that focuses the team on the highest business impact initiatives, while still allowing flexibility for the product teams to have some ownership and autonomy in their assigned product areas. The product strategy should touch on all aspects of the business (partnerships, customer success, support, sales) and should directly contribute to core business KPI's (revenue growth, retention, churn, differentiation, product-led growth). An analogy I often use is that product strategy is similar to bumpers on a bowling ally - you can bump off one side or the other, but you won't get a gutter ball.

For performance management of your (digital) product portfolio 3 categories of metrics to highlight: 1. "Activation" - the conversation funnel from marketing outreach to sign-up. Where do you spend money, what time it takes, where do you see drop-outs, how to optimize the funnel. 2. "Usage" - understanding the behavior and lifecycle of your product. Who is using what when how ... where do users stop, how to reactive them. Usage metrics guide prioritization on development. 3. "Business Impact" - turning usage into business impact. Metrics to start with product revenue and cost; linked to the activation and usage pattern. Start with very few metrics and expand as you scale the offering. And keep the metrics consistent across your portfolio!

Pour chaque produit de votre portefeuille vous devez établir des indicateurs clés qui vous permettent d'évaluer les performances de vos produits. Ces indicateurs clés sont à définir en fonction du type de produit que vous avez: installations, DAU, MAU, taux de conversion, revenu, AOV, etc... Au fur et à mesure, vous pourrez comparer ces indicateurs clés en fonction de vos actions: campagnes d'acquisition payante, ab testing, nouvelle fonctionnalité, ... Vous pourrez ainsi détecter les forces et les faiblesses de votre produit. Vous pourrez aussi détecter des opportunités! Examiner ces performances vous permet de savoir si vous êtes rentable et si il y a une croissance.

Make sure to include real observations in the field to validate how processes do or do not work. If skipped, the metrics become vanity metrics without meaning behind whats happening on the ground. Ideally, conduct these on a quarterly basis. This helps connect dots with the field and can create well timed insights for leadership.

Examine which products have the largest impact on your portfolio. You may want to target more of your time in those areas. Alternatively, determine if there is an up-and-coming product or niche that you must address.

✅ Implement a comprehensive performance evaluation framework to assess each product's contribution to the overall portfolio. ✅ Analyze key metrics such as revenue generation, customer acquisition, and market share to gauge the individual and collective performance of your products. ✅ Regularly review and compare the performance of each product to identify potential opportunities for optimization and portfolio realignment.

A Great Strategist is someone who knows what to focus on and what to sacrifice to the extent that he may decide to lose certain battles to win the war. The same case applied in business, there has to be a balance as there will always be overflow of initiatives that seems very attractive which can lead you to spread your resources thin across 100s of initiatives while doing minimal impact. 1) Using BCG Matrix or Moscow Technique or Financial Analysis like NPV, IRR, or mix of all, you need to define which initaives to focus and drive and which to put on hold and which to outsource and which to cancel 2) You need to factor your competitive strengths, risk factors, lead time, impact and effort matrix would be critical here

Research and development practices should be a great ground to cycle in not only new product development, but also existing products to see if new emergent customer groups can benefit in new ways. These days, we have so many segments with varying degrees of similar needs. Its easy to overlook when teams are overly narrow about their intended audience. For instance, some segments of Millennials hold the same values as much older generations. Its interesting to consider playing with the same product in different contexts.

Using data-driven insights is essential for effective product portfolio management. Reallocate resources from underperforming products to those with higher growth potential, ensuring these decisions are informed by solid data. A focused portfolio, driven by data, typically delivers better outcomes than spreading resources too thinly across many products. For example, if your SaaS product shows a high churn rate but low feature usage, it may indicate the need for a pivot or resource reallocation.

Best practices for managing multiple products and teams: Clear product strategy: Align teams and resources towards shared goals. Prioritization framework: Focus on high-impact features and projects. Effective communication: Foster collaboration and transparency across teams. Agile methodologies: Adapt to changing requirements and deliver value quickly. Regular evaluation: Assess product performance and adjust strategies as needed. Team empowerment: Trust and support teams to make informed decisions.

Effective prioritization and resource allocation are critical to the success of a product. I begin with defining what makes a feature or project a priority based on factors such as customer impact, revenue potential, cost, effort, strategic alignment, and urgency. Using the definition, I rank and prioritize using a MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have) framework. While this is a process I lead, it’s important to involve key stakeholders to gather diverse perspectives and ensure alignment with the overall organization. When translating to backlog, sprint, and capacity planning, I use Asana to look at workload and level the capacity across our development resources to ensure timely delivery and avoid team member burnout.

Managing product teams effectively involves balancing empowerment with guidance. For example, a tech company may empower a development team to make decisions while providing access to relevant data and regular check-ins. Encouraging cross-team collaboration and knowledge sharing helps teams learn from each other’s successes and challenges. Aligning team roles with expertise and offering continuous feedback keeps teams motivated and focused, fostering a collaborative culture for overall product success.

✅ Foster a culture of open communication and collaboration within and across product teams to encourage the sharing of ideas and best practices. ✅ Implement a structured project management approach that promotes transparency, accountability, and efficient coordination among team members. ✅ Provide adequate resources, training, and mentorship to support the professional growth and development of each product team member, fostering a highly skilled and motivated workforce.

Now, let's talk about conducting your product teams. Imagine them as individual musicians, each with unique instruments and skills. Empowerment is the key; let them own their instruments and deliver their tunes. Provide guidance like a seasoned conductor, ensuring harmony. Cultivate a culture of collaboration, like musicians sharing notes. Encourage a learning rhythm, where insights and feedback flow freely. Like assigning instruments based on strengths, align team members with products that resonate with their skills, interests, and goals. This harmony creates a symphony of efficient and effective product management. Harmonize your teams, and the melody of success will follow.

Yes, and its also a great option to have other teams shadow each other to pick up a new slant on their market or cross-pollinate great tactics.

Develop a data-driven strategy to adapt your portfolio using market, competitor, and customer insights. Here's how: 1️⃣ Leverage Market Analysis Tools: Google Trends, SEMrush, and SimilarWeb help discern emerging market trends and customer interests. 2️⃣ Monitor Social Media: Hootsuite and BuzzSumo track real-time social media mentions, sentiments, and discussions about your brand, competitors, or industry to gauge public perception. 3️⃣ Establish Multiple Customer Feedback Channels: SurveyMonkey, UserVoice, and Zendesk facilitate aggregating and analyzing feedback from surveys and customer support interactions. 4️⃣ Collect Competitive Intelligence: Owler, Crunchbase, and CBInsights provide context about competitors and product launches.

Think of your product portfolio as a garden—it needs constant tending. Keep an eye on the weather; monitor market conditions and customer needs like a watchful gardener. Adapt to changing seasons by incorporating trends and feedback. Be ready to prune or plant anew as opportunities bloom or fade. Your product garden thrives on agility—pivot, scale, or let go when necessary. Regularly fertilize with fresh ideas, updating your vision and strategy like nourishing the soil. In this ever-changing landscape, a well-tended garden of products will always flourish.

The fifth step is to adapt and evolve your product portfolio as the market conditions, customer needs, and competitive landscape change. You should monitor the trends, signals, and feedback from your internal and external environment, and use them to inform your product decisions and actions. You should also be ready to pivot, scale, or sunset your products as needed, and to explore new opportunities and ideas for your product portfolio. You should also review and update your product vision and strategy regularly, and ensure that they reflect your current and future aspirations and challenges.

When you have many products, it is necessary to review your product portfolio at regular intervals and see if your products are still creating value? Is your number one product still the leader? Can attention be directed to other products?

It's a well known best practice to foster continuous learning and growth mindset into a Product team's culture. Here are some tactical tips below to how to create that culture. ✅ Encourage team members to share their "failures" and what they learned by being vulnerable and start with yourself. Do this on a frequent cadence such as Product team meetings. ❌ Don't scold team members for their missteps. Instead, ask them what they learned and would do differently.

Make learning a rewardable skill that is easily shared with other teams as well. This works well in teams who value progress and sharing the credit.

In Agile projects, after the sprint retrospective, the Scrum team should identify improvements for upcoming sprints. These meetings enhance project success and benefit team members and leadership. Suggestions for improvements vary among teams. If multiple improvements are agreed upon, the most urgent or impactful one will be prioritized for the next sprint, though this is no longer mandatory.

Outlining clear success criteria at the start of the product lifecycle, and ensuring the data is available to track KPI's will enable product teams to continuously learn and improve. A powerful data-driven approach for continuous improvement is leveraging A/B testing, which can be very helpful for iterative updates after an MVP is delivered to validate the path for future enhancements. Retrospectives are also extremely important to have on a regular basis for the team to routinely reflect on what went well so they can continue to lean into that, and areas for improvements so adjustments can be made accordingly. Documenting lessons leaned from retros will enable to team to have a record of progress made, and avoid reoccurring challenges.

✅ Encourage a culture of experimentation and learning, where teams are empowered to explore new ideas and approaches. ✅ Establish regular feedback loops and performance reviews to identify areas for improvement and implement necessary adjustments. ✅ Foster a mindset of adaptability and resilience, promoting the willingness to learn from both successes and failures to drive continuous growth and innovation.

Retiring / Decommissioning products that are not performing per metrics As the product portfolio grows, it's crucial to pay close attention to metrics and measure the performance of all products. Careful consideration should be given to retiring products, so there is no team attrition and customer abrasion. As product portfolio grows, it's very easy to become attached to an existing feature / functionality. Ruthless prioritization combined with evaluating products performance via established metrics will inform the right decision makers on when it's time to retire a product and pave path for the teams to re focus on something that's a value add for customers.

Prioritizations and alignment with business strategy and direction is key. Be Vigilant with this as product managers we tend to be emotionally attached with the products we create. Never forget the sink cost principle that whatever you invested in something it is gone and shouldn’t affect your decision of how to proceed if changing direction is he right move. If the product is not right then it doesn’t make sense to keep investing more just because you invested a lot already. Resource allocation is key, you don’t have unlimited resources and you cannot go around spending them in million initiatives focus focus focus

I often start with a 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿📝 to define roles, mission, guiding principles, and success metrics when managing a large team of product managers and multiple product lines. This one-page document is the team's north star, empowering every product manager to operate with clarity and purpose. It lays a strong foundation for collaboration and accountability while serving as a key internal communication tool across departments. By aligning our efforts, we drive better product outcomes and foster more cohesive teamwork.

Something very important which i feel was missed out, is the consideration of the technical hands available to deliver the products. it's always good as product managers, to align product expectations with the engineering strengths available to deliver those products, or else you'll create a backlog of unfinished products.

While the article extensively covers managing the product portfolio, it overlooks a crucial aspect—people. The effectiveness of deliverables is intrinsically tied to the competence and synergy within the team. Beyond overseeing squads, portfolios, and metrics, it is imperative to assess if team objectives align with individual goals and aspirations. Providing timely, constructive feedback is critical, identifying members needing support and enabling them to contribute meaningfully in areas where they excel. Just as strategic hiring is pivotal, recognizing misfits is equally crucial for sustained team success. Like selecting features aligned with market needs, adjusting the team structure to match evolving market dynamics is essential.