Vision is by nature a long-term perspective - peering off into the future at an undefined point. A product vision, therefore, drives strategy, priorities, and execution through agreement on long term outcomes. But as product teams, we cannot solely focus on the long term. We must align on the short-term risks that threaten the long-term outcomes and stability, so we all understand how to navigate the product's survival.
In Radical Product Thinking, Dutt defines five categories of risk to a product. They are outlined below with some examples I’ve pulled from my experience.
Technology / Operational Risk
- Needed tech solutions are not available / feasible
- Operational issues (such as, scalability)
- Cybersecurity issues
Legal / Regulatory Risk
- Not meeting necessary compliance standards
- Risk of being sued / receiving demand letters
Financial Risk
- Running out of budget before launch/completion
- Not generating enough revenue
- On-going budget not enough to maintain product
Personnel Risk
- Product cannot survive departure of key personnel
- Resources being pulled into other projects / products
Stakeholder Risk
- Powerful stakeholders are skeptical of product / outcomes
- Potential to lose executive sponsorship
Identifying the immediate risks to your product is necessary for any team. This allows not only for mitigation of the risk, but an additional framework for prioritizing product activities. Then each activity can be placed on the below quadrant, which measures alignment to vision and stability.
STAND-UP EXERCISE
Ask your team to think through what they think might be the biggest stability risk to the product at this moment? What category does it fall in? Are you all aligned? You might also think about risks in terms of time scale - what do you project the biggest risk to be in the next 3 months? Next year?
Once the stability risks are identified, ask what the consequences might be if the risk was realized. Then you can begin brainstorming a mitigation plan.
