Frameworks and Mental Models

One way product managers can be most effective is by having a process to get to the answers they need quickly and consistently. To find organization in the chaos of a new project or initiative, product managers can use framework thinking.

Framework thinkers are able to find clarity in complex situations. Further, good frameworks can bring focus to everyone's thinking, allowing the team to prioritize the questions that really matter. Framework thinkers make more progress because they remove the clutter and roadblocks for their teams.

Frameworks and mental models are abundant. There are some that are too specific in other areas to apply directly to product management, but almost all of them have something useful to take away. You can find much written about them, as companies and institutions who develop them have a strong incentive to promote them. The specific model becomes part of their brand, their unique selling proposition, and eventually recruitment tools. Some become whole books or treatise, which may or may not actually be the point of a framework. It should be easy to remember and simple to employ.

PMs can start researching specific frameworks for product management to provide structure. You want to build a personal catalog of these that you can lean on when faced with a problem or complex initiative. But looking widely at general business or thinking frameworks can also make you a better product manager (and more well-rounded person). Any of these require a bit more research into the methodology, as well as some trial and error in the application of it.

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STAND-UP EXERCISE

Ask the team to read (or listen to) Product Management Mental Models for Everyone, which highlights frameworks in the categories of Investment, Design/Scope, and Shipping/Iterating. I asked my team specifically to reference models 5-12 in the designing and scoping section.

For stand-up discuss if anyone sees where these frameworks might have been useful to have in past projects. Ask if anyone has additional frameworks they use regularly, or have seen used at other employers. Do any of these contradict each other? Are there some that seem better suited for the culture or content of your team than others? Which can you immediately begin using, or using elements of?

Envy

The journey to be a better product manager or product designer, like most professional careers, is full of comparison. Comparison against others on the same career track, against other product teams and their resourcing or maturity, comparison against other products at other companies (which can be great research!), comparison against other areas of the business and their ability to drive or accomplish work, and the list goes on.

Comparison can often trap us in envy. You do the comparison, find your own lacking, and wish you had the other. This is how some features get put into roadmaps, after all. But looked at slightly larger, the comparisons that make us envious might also have something to teach us - especially if we think about it in terms of personal or professional growth. The twinge of envy is a trigger that we are unhappy or desire to change something. Can we spin that into an action?

A bite-size podcast I often listen to is the Before Breakfast podcast by Laura Vanderkam (episodes are around 5-10 minutes). She had a specific episode called “Understand your Jealousy”, which speaks to this idea of finding meaning in what makes you envious, albeit in a more personal setting. Finding your “pain point” of what makes you envious allows you to do something about it.

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STAND-UP EXERCISE

Do whiteboard exercises with your team to kick off a conversation. My team did this exercise over two different stand-ups, but you could combine to one, time-permitting.

The first whiteboard is asking folks what makes them envious. I put it on a scale of personal to professional, so we could spark conversation easily but still dig into the workplace-focused topics. The second whiteboard flips the idea, asking why might others be envious of you? This is meant to open up the understanding of jealousy (that sometimes what you perceive isn’t reality) and that it can also be a real driver for behavior.

What forward steps can we create from where we see our envy? And where can we help others by noticing their envy of us? How do we turn what can be seen as a negative emotion into a call for action?

Asynchronous Ways of Working

The most effective product teams know how and when to communicate with each other, which is why all teams should have agreed upon “ways of working”. This could be referred to as ground rules, or working agreements, or baselines, but they should define how the team wants to work together, what they want in the working environment, and what they want from each other. There are many templates out there, and perhaps we’ll revisit this broader theme in a future stand-up topic.

But I’ve recently asked my team to reconsider their ways of working in terms of the working environment. Much has changed in the last two years regarding virtual work, and our organization (which was previously quite location-specific) has hired folks from across the globe in that time. This means product teams span countries, timezones, cultures. Since some folks have begun returning to an office at least a couple days a week, and some folks won’t ever go into an office, it is an ideal time to revisit the topic.

One of the original principles of Agile was regarding physical co-location. That has obviously eased and been replaced by virtual co-location. But I asked the team to consider asynchronous communication for areas where they might never have previously thought of it. Geekbot published an article explaining how to run asynchronous stand-ups, that formerly sacred synchronous touchpoint of each product team member’s day. (Geekbot has incentive for this, as their product is a Slack plug-in to help automate/optimize this process.) Finding tools and processes that optimize for all folks on the team is necessary for an effective product team.

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STAND-UP EXERCISE

Have your team review the Geekbot article “Daily Remote Standups: Video Call Downsides & How to Run Better Remote Standups in Slack”, and then discuss if they have found any of the same challenges as the article outlines. Are folks getting burned out on all the video meetings? Is the daily standup timed appropriately for all team members?

And then look to them to push it forward - how can they incorporate solutions to some of these problems? How would you test async stand-ups within your own team? Can you begin running asyc stand-ups for Summer Fridays? Or on days that are already ceremony-heavy like the end of sprints? How can you pair with your Agile coach / scrum master to experiment with this?

What are other asynchronous tools that can be employed within your product team? Are these documented in your ways of working?

3w3 Framework

I often follow product managers on Twitter to see what types of interesting frameworks they are using for their own teams. Sandeep Potdar posted what he calls the “3W3 Product Discovery Framework” to structure the beginnings of product discovery. The left hand column is the basic structure of discovery - the who, what, and why. (Most product managers are familiar with the 5-Whys that help dig somewhat deeper.) However, it is the additional columns that make this approach interesting; the follow-up questions are the real meat.

Beginning to ask these questions can help direct a course to success. And the “so-what” / “now-what” are excellent jumping off points for a business case or rationalization. But even more established products can benefit from revisiting these questions, ensuring the answers are in the current targets and roadmaps, and keeping the team on track.

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STAND-UP EXERCISE
Ask your team to read through as much of the Twitter thread from Sandeep Potdar as possible before the meeting. Come prepared to discuss if they’ve answered these questions for their product and audience. By reviewing these questions, are they seeing any unexplored areas or opportunity for further investigation? Further, what key questions are missing here? What other research areas are necessary to explore? What types of “where” or further “when” questions could be formulated?

Envision the Future

For weeks where the team is feeling overwhelmed or when we are all approaching tight deadlines, I like to keep the standup topics lighter and the “homework” to a minimum. One way to do that is to bring in pop culture, or to have the topic be video-based. This week’s does both!

In the late 80’s AT&T ran a campaign entitled “You Will” that was their vision of the future, and how AT&T was going to get us there. It’s hard to find high fidelity digital clips of ads that were VHS- taped decades ago, but this is one of the best compilations I’ve found. The campaign centered around connecting folks in new digital ways, but also ease of transactions in regular life, and efficiencies in the workplace. It was like science fiction when it was released - in a land of fax machines and newly-minted touchtone phones, suddenly someone was talking seriously about retinal scanners and satellite technology. But there is much to discuss in this beyond the technology. (And if you have a multi-generational team, it is great to see those who remember these ads originally playing discussing them with those who laugh at the idea of AT&T being a major technology player.)

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STAND-UP EXERCISE

Watch the video and then discuss as a team. Some potential questions to get you started -
- What did AT&T get right? What of these technology concepts do we see today? What did they miss?
- How are our personalized versions of these technologies different user experiences than the more public versions or community versions that AT&T imagined?
- What does it mean to vision this bold and then fall short? AT&T itself didn’t bring us these technologies, but would we still have these functions if someone hadn’t publicized them?
- How do we gamble on vision versus practicality?