Back in Skype, our Group Product Manager introduced quarterly product review meetings. I loved the idea and extended it further to our testing teams. It’s a perfect opportunity to bring together all stakeholders and focus on each team’s outcomes to set the next quarter’s goals. In between product review meetings, a team can focus on their strategy to achieve the agreed vision and goals while expecting no management intervention (unless, of course, emergencies affecting the whole company’s survival emerge). As product review meetings can take half a day or even more, they are expensive. In return, they give clarity on progress and focus.
Why introduce product review meetings?
The main goal of product review meetings is to review how the team vision matches with the company vision. It’s a perfect opportunity for the team to get feedback from the stakeholders and keep them in sync with the direction and the achievements the team has had. Executives and other stakeholders can provide context to product strategy, tactics, and company metrics. As a result, it gives the team the possibility to adjust its goals or focus on the business’s next opportunities. Product review meetings should provide input for the following hypotheses the team wants to tackle.
What should you discuss in product review meetings?
Product review meetings are not a place to list the outputs — release notes are for that. It’s a discussion meeting where outcomes rather than outputs should be in focus. Each company and each product team is different, and thus it’s hard to use the same structure for every product. However, what should always get attention are the key customer insights, risks, and blockers the team faces. Make sure to customise your product review meeting so that it works for your organisation.
What interests me is what the team has learned since the previous meeting. It’s essential to create an environment where you can discuss conflicting views, and then the team leaves from the session feeling empowered — they know they are trusted to move forward with the agreed goals. The team should leave from the meeting with more confidence, focus, and clarity on their direction ahead, feeling full ownership over their ability to achieve the desired outcome.
Who should participate?
The product review meetings are discussion and decision meetings. Thus, nobody should be listening simply to be informed — one can later send a memo to them instead. The focus should be on the team itself´, and you should limit the number of stakeholders to those who have insights to give to the team.
#superagile score for product teams
Our teams at Concise are using a bit different format — we assess our #superagile maturity. It’s kind of like a retro for a product development team. The goal is to evaluate the team maturity and discuss potential ways for improving it. The #superagile score consists of 13 elements — from continuous deployment and balanced testing to the team’s psychological safety and celebration. You can read more about each component from our e-book. We also have an app coming out on March 30th to conduct your team’s maturity assessment.
What’s your experience with product review meetings? What are the main benefits you see?
Let’s discuss!
