ResourcesBlogThe Productside Product Management Team Assessment: Improving Team Performance 

The Productside Product Management Team Assessment: Improving Team Performance 

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The Product Management Team Assessment

For over 25 years, Productside has been a partner to hundreds of product leaders and worked on custom product management training and advisory services to transform teams. No two engagements have been the same because each product management team is unique; shaped by the products they manage and their organizational culture. This is why we frequently begin our engagement with a thorough assessment of your team’s skills and product operations. 

Our diagnostic process involves interviewing product managers and stakeholders that work with product management including sales, marketing, and engineering, and auditing key documents like job descriptions, roadmaps, and business cases. This helps us gain a deeper understanding of the current capabilities and maturity of the product management organization we are working with. We use our insights to tailor our training programs, ensuring we follow change management best practices and provide the right content and guidance for maximizing the adoption of new product management processes. 

These kinds of in-depth product management team assessments, while valuable, require time and expertise to run effectively. We wanted to bring to product leaders a new team assessment tool that allows them to self-assess their teams across key dimensions of product management practices. This free assessment offering provides a great starting point for identifying areas of strength and opportunities for growth. 

Why Assessing Team Maturity Matters 

Many leaders often focus on individual skill development when trying to increase the effectiveness of their team. While this is important, it doesn’t provide a complete picture of the team’s overall capabilities. Team maturity encompasses not just individual skills, but also how well product team members work together, adhere to processes, and align with strategic goals. 

A mature product management team can effectively navigate product management processes across the product lifecycle, from understanding market needs to maximizing successful products out in market. By assessing your team’s maturity, you can identify gaps, prioritize improvements, and ultimately drive better business outcomes. 

Introducing the Productside Product Management Team Assessment 

The Productside Product Management Team Assessment is designed specifically for leaders who want to gain an understanding of their team’s capabilities and gaps across the Product Management Process. This tool evaluates your team’s maturity across five critical dimensions: Context, Discover, Create, Deliver, and Leadership. Let’s break down each of these dimensions: 

  1. Context: How well does your product team understand the competitive landscape and market dynamics? 
  1. Discover: Is your product team proficient in generating and validating new product ideas? 
  1. Create: How effective is your product team in creating and executing on a strategic roadmap? 
  1. Deliver: Can your product team successfully launch products and track KPIs and metrics to achieve desired business outcomes? 
  1. Leadership: Are your Product Managers able to drive strategic initiatives under your leadership? 

Key Differentiators of the Productside Assessment 

Unlike other tools that focus solely on individual skills, the Productside Product Management Team Assessment provides a holistic view of your team’s overall capability. Here are some key differentiators that set our assessment apart: 

  1. Comprehensive Evaluation: The assessment evaluates your product team’s maturity across all critical dimensions of the Product Management Process. This comprehensive approach provides a more accurate picture of team dynamics and areas for improvement. 
  1. Alignment with the Productside Blueprint: Our assessment is aligned with the Productside Blueprint, a proven methodology for managing products. Our recommendations for improvement are based on our Productside Playbook. 
  1. Expert Consulting: Leaders who complete the assessment can choose to receive a complimentary 30-minute consulting session with a Productside expert. This session provides deeper insights into the team’s performance and personalized recommendations for improvement. 
  1. Strategic Baseline: The assessment provides a baseline maturity level, creating a solid foundation for developing a custom business case for an improvement plan.  

How the Assessment Works 

The Productside Product Management Team Assessment is designed to be user-friendly and efficient. Here’s how it works: 

  1. Complete the Survey: The assessment consists of 30 questions that evaluate your product team’s capabilities across the five critical dimensions. It should take 10 minutes or less to complete. 
  1. Receive Your Report: Upon completion, you will receive a detailed report showing your product team’s maturity levels, with clear insights into strengths and areas for improvement. 
  1. Expert Consultation: Schedule your complimentary 30-minute consulting session with a Productside expert to discuss your results and next steps. 

Start Your Assessment 

Our Productside Product Management Team Assessment, is a starting point for any product leader who knows they have a talented team, but are inconsistent in their product management process and getting limited results. The assessment can reveal areas for improvement, such as ideating new product concepts and aligning development efforts with strategic goals. But like any assessment, it is not a thorough study of all the product management practices at your organization.  

We recommend that leaders schedule a complimentary consulting session with a Productside expert. During this session, we can dive into the specific areas with gaps and develop a targeted improvement plan such as: 

  1. Implementing Regular Training Sessions: Focusing on enhancing the team’s capabilities along the biggest gaos. 
  1. Establishing Clear Documentation Processes: Ensuring that all product decisions are well-documented and accessible to the entire team. 
  1. Aligning Product Strategies with Business Outcomes: Creating a more robust framework for aligning product development efforts with strategic business objectives. 

Are you ready to get a deeper understanding of your prouduct team’ capabilities and maturity?

Click the green button and get on the journey to doing product better:
Start My Assessment
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rina Alexin
CEO

Rina, the CEO of 280 Group, has a distinguished background in finance and innovation. Starting her career as an analyst at McKinsey & Company, she specialized in credit and interest rate risk management. She further honed her leadership skills at MetLife, focusing on intrapreneurship and employee recognition in Latin America. At 280 Group, Rina excels in driving transformative change, empowering product professionals with essential skills for outstanding product management. Her leadership is characterized by a strong emphasis on continuous learning, team development, and a commitment to exceeding client expectations. Rina holds a BA with honors from Amherst College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is also a member of the Association of International Product Marketing and Management.

June 06, 2024