The Practice is the Product: Emphasizing Processes for Sustainable Product Success
In product management, we often focus heavily on the end result—the product itself—while overlooking the processes that lead to its creation. However, as highlighted in Tim Herbig’s keynote at Product at Heart 2024, the practice behind product development is equally important. Let’s explore how refining processes, team dynamics, and experimentation contribute to long-term product success.
1. The Power of Process: Shifting Focus from Outputs to Outcomes
Many teams are preoccupied with outputs—launching features and shipping updates. While this focus may yield quick wins, it often results in burnout, unclear priorities, and products that don’t solve meaningful problems. Instead, teams should emphasize outcome-driven practices where processes evolve based on customer feedback and strategic insights.
Practical Tip: Instead of chasing the next feature release, establish an iterative product development cycle where each decision is based on measurable impacts, such as improved user engagement or increased retention rates. This ensures that your team is aligned on delivering value, not just new features.
2. Continuous Experimentation: Integrating Testing Into Daily Work
Building a successful product requires continuous experimentation. This isn’t just about running large-scale A/B tests but creating a culture where every team member feels empowered to test, learn, and iterate. Herbig underscores the importance of fostering an environment where experiments are regular, even for smaller decisions like UI tweaks or copy changes.
Practical Tip: Introduce a framework where every product update must pass a small experiment or user test before scaling up. For example, if you’re testing a new checkout flow, release it to a small cohort of users and measure the conversion impact before a full rollout. This helps de-risk product decisions and ensures that improvements are grounded in real-world user data.
3. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Breaking Down Silos
Strong processes depend on seamless collaboration between different functions—designers, engineers, marketers, and data analysts. Many organizations suffer from siloed teams, where each function operates in isolation, leading to misaligned goals and a fragmented user experience.
Practical Tip: Embed cross-functional collaboration into your sprints or roadmapping processes. For example, invite engineers to design review meetings and allow product marketers to participate in sprint planning. This reduces misunderstandings and enables teams to approach challenges holistically, leading to faster, more cohesive decisions.
4. Embrace Ambiguity: Prioritize Learning Over Certainty
In an environment where technology evolves rapidly, product teams must grow comfortable with uncertainty. Rigid, long-term roadmaps can hinder adaptability, whereas embracing ambiguity allows teams to pivot quickly based on emerging opportunities or changing market conditions.
Practical Tip: Instead of creating a detailed roadmap for the next 12 months, adopt a flexible, rolling 3-month roadmap that is continuously revised. Use customer insights and competitive data to adjust priorities in real time, allowing for more agility in product development.
5. Balancing Short-Term Wins with Long-Term Goals
While achieving short-term wins is important, product leaders must also keep an eye on long-term growth and sustainability. Herbig emphasizes the need for product teams to balance reactive work (bug fixes, urgent customer requests) with proactive, strategic initiatives that drive long-term innovation.
Practical Tip: Implement a time-blocking strategy within your sprints. Allocate 60-70% of the team’s capacity to short-term fixes and the remaining time to long-term, strategic initiatives. This balance ensures you address immediate customer needs without sacrificing future growth opportunities.
6. Building Feedback Loops: Learning as a Core Competency
Strong product practices revolve around continuous learning. Implementing regular feedback loops—from customers, stakeholders, and internal teams—helps refine processes and products alike. By embedding learning into your workflow, teams can avoid tunnel vision and ensure that they are always improving.
Practical Tip: After every major release or experiment, hold a post-mortem where teams openly discuss what worked, what didn’t, and how processes can be improved. Use these learnings to adjust how your team approaches future sprints, allowing for a culture of continuous improvement.
Conclusion
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, the practice behind product development can be just as important as the final product. By prioritizing continuous experimentation, fostering collaboration, and staying adaptable in the face of uncertainty, product teams can create sustainable, long-term value. Tim Herbig’s insights remind us that the road to product success is paved with strong, adaptable processes—not just the shiny features we ship.
For more insights, check out the original talk from Tim Herbig’s Keynote at Product at Heart 2024.
