Product Direction

1. What is the challenge you are trying to figure out?

2. What will you do to make this a reality?

3. How do you know you are making progress?

4. What metrics are you optimising for?

5. Why should Customers and the Org care?

Can you answer all these questions? What objections come in response to your answers? Can you confidently defend your plans?

Clear Product Direction helps a Product Manager navigate key day-to-day challenges

• It is clear how your team contributes to the org goals

• Progress updates focus on the outcome you're optimising for, rather than just your outputs
  (i.e. rather than "what have you delivered" you can shift towards "here are the changes that resulted from shipping [change]" )

• Constructive "push back" conversions
  As a PM, on any given day a myriad of ideas come your way. With clear direction navigating any unaligned ideas becomes easier. Turn a frustrating "No" into an opportunity to share your direction with something like "Great idea. Our current direction is this way [fill in the blanks] so now might not be the right time for this one. Let me capture it and circle back when we refine our direction. By the way, if you have any ideas that might help us achieve this goal, I'd love to hear them".

• Empower your team to make decisions.
  Once clear direction is set and your team have shared context, you're no longer a blocker when relatively trivial questions arise.

Product Direction differs based on your role within a Product Management Org. 

There is similarity across all levels - e.g. the goal, the plan and the measures of success should always be present. The differences occur in the "depth" and target audiences. e.g. Product leaders will  aim for a "10,000 ft view", while a team level PM will have very detailed plans for a specific problem or opportunity scope.

Product Leadership will typically define at a higher-level. Working closely with the C-level to take the org direction and reshape it for their product teams. It is a translation of how the product org intends to contribute to the overall organisational strategy. Typical components can include:

• Product Vision(s)

• Product Strategy

• Product People - team topology (perhaps in collaboration with Engineering), product org structure - roles and responsibilities, people development etc

• Product Processes - tooling, process, artefacts, rituals etc 

Senior Level Product Managers will define similar to the above but in more detail and for a group/stream within the product org. 

• At this level, the product initiatives are defined for each scope. There are the big problems for customers that if solved well, lead the org towards the strategic intents

• The specifics of what is a 'scope' are highly org dependent. A scope is typically a group/stream organised around user types, themes or functions etc. The takeaway is that at this level, setting direction sits within a defined context. 

IC Product Managers take guidance from above and marry it up with the concrete knowledge they get from shipping changes and interacting with Customers and Data. For the area the PM "owns" they should at minimum be able to answer:

• What are you optimising for? This is the goal or outcome

• How are you going to achieve that? This might be the roadmap or delivery plan

• How will you measure progress? This might be your OKRs or KPIs - some measurable thing to help gauge impact

From org level, to group level, to the team - this connection is what folks mean by "cascading".

You are ahead of the game if you can answer the following:

1. What are you trying to achieve?

2. What will you do to make this a reality?

3. How do you know you are making progress?

4. What metrics are you optimising for?

5. Why should Customers and the Org care?

How to capture and present it? 

You can do this in a variety of ways - I find a gDoc is a simple place to start.

Here's an example with a made up scenario: Product Direction Brief - feel free to make a copy.