A Modern Product Team Charter
It’s hard to create a product team charter quickly, but it is critical to have one.
This post is intended to jumpstart your progress by providing a clear example as a starting point, as well as guidance on what makes a good charter.
What Good Looks Like
One of my early product mentors used to say: “Show them what good looks like”.
I love this quote because it is describing the outcome of leading by example. It is the first step in the “I do, we do, you do” framework.
Examples can be tremendously helpful in illustrating what an abstract concept looks like in practice. Defining a team charter for a product team could not be more abstract, so I thought it would be helpful to share.
Here is my version of what good looks like.
This is the Wrong Charter for your Team
When I was in college, I used to post the source code to all of my computer science coursework publicly on my website after the semester completed. As someone who learns best by seeing examples, I shared my code as a way to provide example code to anyone who might find it useful.
A few years after my graduation, I got an email from the university. It turns out one of my professors had a database of all of the previously submitted source code, which did a diff on new source code submitted by students against all previous source code submitted.
Someone had found my example very useful and submitted my exact source code as their own work. 100% match. The student received zero credit, and I got an email.
The thing that was a bummer about that was not that they got caught and got a zero, it was that they missed an opportunity to deeply learn the subject matter by doing the work themselves. If you don’t sweat over every word, and whether it will drive the result you want, you don’t learn anything. Examples are great, but you have to make it yours. In making it yours, you learn what yours is.
I believe strongly in the charter outlined by this article but I also know that product is different at every company. If you take this exact charter and paste it into your organization as-is - like the unfortunate student who tried to use my source code as-is - you probably won’t love the results.
A suggestion: take a look, borrow what makes sense, and then create your own charter based on your business context.
Make it yours.
About Charters
Isn’t a charter a waste of time? Why have one, what is it anyway?
Why Have a Charter
A product team charter will speed up your team.
If the product team is different at every company and your company hasn’t defined what product means, then your team will be confused. Confusion will slow you down. A charter is a tool to reduce confusion, increase focus, and drive acceleration.
What Is a Charter
A Product Team Charter defines what the mission of the product function is, the set of core principles that the product team lives by, and the measures that indicate the product team is succeeding at the mission and principles.
In short, it’s the purpose and principles that animate everything the product team does.
Mission
The mission is the reason that the product team exists. It is the north star for the team, a common cause.
Why does the company invest in the product team? What is the expected outcome from investing in the team?
Principles
The principles are the core values that are held by every member of the team, that guides how they approach achieving their mission. They are truisms and guidance for the behavior of the team.
What are the key behaviors that guide how the team operates? What are the foundational beliefs that drive how everything else is done?
Measures
The measures are signals that indicate the extent to which you are succeeding at your mission and principles. They are the best quantitative and qualitative measures you can collect and combine that signal the level of success of the team. They serve as key structures to reinforce the behaviors represented by the mission and principles.
What signals would indicate your level of success at the mission or principles? What would you measure if you could measure anything? What is the closest approximation to that perfect measure that you can measure today? How could you improve measures to be better indicators?
What About Values?
It’s critical to have values, to document them, to share them, and follow them whether they are in the charter or not. I believe values belong in a team working agreement, or something similar, so they are not listed here.
Good vs. Bad Charters
What makes a good charter vs a bad one? A few quick guidelines
A Good Charter
A good charter (document) is short. Each section is intentionally short. Your charter should be 1 or 2 pages at maximum. Any longer, and it won’t fit into anyone’s head. The underlying ‘what’ and ‘why’ is deep.
A good charter is one that is deeply understood and supported by the entire organization.
A good charter becomes a shorthand summary for your purpose and approach at the company. It is something that everyone sees demonstrated in their daily activities, reinforced by the behaviors of the company and teams. The charter provides a common vocabulary for describing the what and why behind those behaviors.
A mission should be something fits into a single sentence and describes the perpetual reason the team exists.
Principles should be 5-10 brief statements that are the rules of the road for how the product team operates.
Measures should encourage the right behaviors, and be known to be imperfect. It’s better to have no measure than a measure that steers you away from your mission and principles.
A Bad Charter
A bad charter is misunderstood, misaligned, and forgotten.
A bad charter is just a dry document, sitting on a lonely fileshare. No one knows what it means. It is trotted out once every quarter or year and dryly read through. It has no relation to daily activities and is not reinforced by behaviors of the company and teams. This kind of charter has limited or no value.
A bad charter will have a mission that is long, or overly abstract. It isn’t useful or memorable.
Bad charters have principles that are vague, confusing, or in conflict. More than 10, and they aren’t really core principles. Less than 5 and they become too general and abstract.
Bad charters will measure the wrong things. Be careful that the measures don’t accidentally reinforce undesired behaviors that are at odds with your mission and principles. Be aware that measures are typically imperfect and incomplete; do your best and communicate their imperfection.
About This Charter
This charter is a point in time document, and ‘what good looks like’ will change. I expect to continue to learn and adapt in the years to come, and my charter starting point will likely change as well. So should yours.
Each of the charter components I outline below deserve a much longer discussion. That discussion (and potentially documentation) would outline what each line means and doesn’t mean, the why behind it, and stories of people in the organization that have exhibited the principles and pursued the mission. For my outline below I will include a brief paragraph under each item to articulate a too-short version of that material.
This charter is based on leading product teams at tech companies. Your mileage may vary at non-tech companies.
A Product Team Charter
Mission
Be the Product Expert
Continuously deeply understand all facets of your product: vision, strategy, product, problems it solves, current solutions, frictions, customers, customer behavior, market, positioning, segmentation, target segments, traction, usage, sales motion, support motion, build motion, deploy/release/launch motion, success motion, financials, history, stakeholders, and makers.
See the Future
Have a clear vision of where the market is going, and what the product’s place in it will be: trends, shifts, gaps, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, discovery, patterns, validation, how we win.
Lead us There
Continuously define, refine, drive and align the company on a strategy to get to the future before someone else does: Strategy, prioritization, roadmap, alignment, evangelism, collaboration, breakdown, iteration, launch, measure, iterate
Principles
Always be Learning
There is always more to learn. Create opportunities to learn every day, in every interaction. Seek, collect, and synthesize context. Learn aggressively. Use that learning to rethink your path, and to upgrade the decisions you are making.
Build Cross Functional Teams
No product person is an island. We are stronger, faster, and smarter when we solve problems as a cross-functional team. Shift cross-functional roles ‘left’ in the process without wasting their time. Minimize internal surprises. Build partners in other functions and enlist them to the cause. Win together. Your cross-functional team is your first team. We have territory but are not territorial - getting it done matters more than who does it.
Lead with Context*
Unite people in pursuit of a deeply understood goal, and give plenty of wiggle room for them to pursue that goal. Gather, synthesize, prioritize and summarize information. Always be building and sharing your rationale. Tell stories that communicate the why. Create good decision-makers. Avoid authoritarianism. Avoid micromanagement. Avoid rigid solutions. No concrete airplanes.
*This phrase borrowed from Netflix via Marty Cagan is a perfect wording for a collection of behaviors I am a strong believer in.
Align on a Cadence
Load (almost) everyone onto your bus. Make sure you are going in the right direction, and everyone knows where that is. Seek and internalize feedback early and often. Listen, adapt, then lead. Do it even if you think you don’t need to. Build a flywheel of trust. Be the chief repeater. Avoid accidental estrangement. Align just often enough that is slightly interesting to all participants most of the time.
Focus on Outcomes
Achieving the customer outcome and driving business success is what we care about. Love problems before solutions - solving the problem is what matters. It’s 1000 songs in your pocket, not the Portable 5GB Song Drive with FireWire.
Progress over Perfection
Seek imperfection with learning, then iterate. A shipped product is better than an unshipped product. Fail forward. Ask ‘what would happen if we shipped without that?’. Increase the throughput of value to customers. Realize that the thing we have least of is time.
Drive the Business
Earn the right to continue by creating business success. Understand the business and link solutions to the business flywheel.
Measures
Mission Measures
Product Expertise: % of product team capable of giving a high quality product demo, that includes the customer problem, showing how the product solves it, and how it compares to the top 3 competitive solutions in the market.
Direction Expertise: % of product team that knows the next 3 things their product needs to deliver, and can articulate a strong rationale for why those 3 matter more to the business and customer than the other 1000 options available.
Cross-Functional Expertise: % of the product team that can fill in as a reasonable proxy for their cross-functional partners in engineering, design, marketing, success, support, and sales.
Vision Existence: % of the product team with a documented vision, strategy, and rationale for their product
Vision Maturity: % of the documented visions that have been researched, and tested in the marketplace
Vision Alignment: % of product team that can teach the rest of the company the holistic product vision, strategy, the why behind it, and the roadmap of outcomes that take us there.
Evangelism: % of cross-functional team members that know and understand the vision, strategy, roadmap outcomes, and the why behind it, and are capable of conveying their belief in it to their own teams.
Market Traction: Incremental sales funnel metrics associated with new capabilities released in the last 12mos (visits, qualified leads, opportunities, trials, conversions).
Customer Adoption: Number of customers deeply using new product capabilities
Principles Measures
Always be learning
% of product team learning in every timebox (week, month, qtr)
Pie chart of the type of learning occurring (customer, business, market, product, process, people, technique)
Ratio of listening to speaking by any given product team member
Build Cross Functional Teams
% of time product team spends with cross-functional peers
Avg time between start and engagement of each cross-functional role
Number of cross-functional surprises/escalations
Lead with Context
% of execution team that deeply understands the customer need for what they are building
% of execution team that deeply understands the business driver for what they are building
Number of misfires due to lack of context
Ratio of speaking about what vs. why for any given product team member
Align on a Cadence
Avg time between leadership alignment per team
Avg time between cross-functional alignment per team
Avg time between market alignment per team
Number of meaningful internal surprises
Focus on Outcomes
Number of solutions considered per release
Avg time until outcome reached
% of difference between original idea vs. what was released
Progress over Perfection
Cycle time until first release
Number of total releases before completing a capability/outcome
Number of experiments run per timebox (week, month, qtr)
Number of failed releases/experiments
Drive the business
Website visits attributed to new capabilities in last 12mos
Qualified leads attributed to new capabilities in last 12mos
Conversions attributed to new capabilities in last 12mos
Revenue attributed to new capabilities in last 12mos
Summary
A thoughtfully created and deeply understood product team charter can be short and simple, and will accelerate your team, product, and company.
If you don’t have a charter, start here:
Your product team exists to be product experts, see the future, and lead your company to that future. Your product team does that by always learning, working cross-functionally, leading with context to deliver outcomes, aligning on a cadence and constantly driving the business forward with progress over perfection.
Don’t stop there.
If your charter is a 100% match to mine (or anyone’s), keep going. Adapt the charter to work in your business context, so it is something you and your team deeply understand and believe in.
A continuously improving charter is what good looks like.
