This document outlines strategies for maintaining focus in product management, emphasizing team alignment with a clear product roadmap, reducing meeting times, and having a structured process for feature requests. Key practices include setting quarterly OKRs, conducting regular standups, and prioritizing actionable metrics. The document advises saying 'no' to unnecessary feature requests and suggests writing a press release first to clarify expectations for new products.

1. FOCUS
MAINTAINING
inProductManagement

2. We’ve got a recipe for
maintaining focus.
Here’s what it consists of…

3. things

4. 1) Align your team to your
product roadmap
2) Spend less time in meetings
3) Have a process for
deciding what to build next

5. 1

6. Team alignment
(with a fast paced roadmap)

7. OKRs

8. O
K
R
bjectives
ey
esults

9. Here’s an example of an OKR:

10. Objective: Get better at
project management.
Key results:
ship on time. Product update
X shipped. 100% of team
don’t quit.
Q2 OKRs

11. Objective:
project management.
Key results: 90% of features
ship on time. Product update
X shipped. 100% of team
don’t quit.
Q2 OKRs

12. Objective: Get better at
project management.
Key results: 90% of features
ship on time. Product update
X shipped. 100% of team
don’t quit.
Q2 OKRs

13. OKRs ensure team
is aligned with
company direction.

14. Set OKRs quarterly.
Company &
Individual OKRs are
critical.
REVIEW them.

15. Developers

16. It can be hard to predict
how long development
projects are going to take.

17. It’s like planning a
walk from San
Francisco to LA…

18. http://www.quora.com/Engineering-
Management/Why-are-software-
development-task-estimations-regularly-off-
by-a-factor-of-2-3

19. See this Quora post.
It’s awesome.
Awesome Quora Post

20. Try budgeting time
(rather than estimating it)

22. Be
uncomfortably
open
with metrics

23. Share the metrics
that matter.
Not just the ones
that are easy to
share.

24. Recap

25. Team alignment
Budget projects with time
Be open + transparent with metrics
Set OKRs every quarter
(this takes practice)

26. 2

27. Spend more time building
Less time meeting

28. FACT:
Developers
don’t like
meetings

29. FACT: (most)
People
don’t like
meetings

30. Process

31. Too much Too little

32. Here’s what we do…

33. Standups
Monday morning
Friday afternoon

34. On Monday
mornings we have a
one hour meeting to
plan the upcoming
week.

35. Standups
Monday morning
Friday afternoon

36. Every day we do a quick
standup catchup –
everyone says what they
are working on and if
they are blocked by
anything.

37. Standups
Monday morning
Friday afternoon

38. Friday afternoons we catch
up over a beer to round off
the week. We demo what
we completed and show
the team how much
awesome we have added.

39. Internal tools set culture

42. We use Slack for
team collaboration
and communication.
It rocks.

44. We also use many
other tools. Things like
Recurly, Trello, Sequel
Pro, and GitHub make
our lives a lot easier.

45. We also use GoSquared a
lot for understanding what
our customers are up to.

46. Recap

47. Spend less time in meetings
Fewer but better meetings
Internal tools set the culture
The right amount of process

48. 3

49. Deciding what to build next

50. Feature requests come from
customers

51. Feature requests come from
customers
AND your team

52. Keep track
Have a process

53. A lack of ideas

54. A lack of ideas
is rarely the problem

56. Focus is about
handling requests
like…

57. Can’t we just…

58. No

59. It’ll only take a few minutes to…

60. No

61. It shouldn’t be too hard to…

62. No

63. If you don’t say “no”
to enough feature
requests your product
will end up looking
like…

64. http://tomtunguz.com/series-a-overloaded/

65. And that doesn’t look
terribly comfortable.

66. Funnily enough, a
small company called
Apple put it rather well
in a beautiful
animation they made.

67. there are a thousand no’s for every yes

68. Watch the video.
Get inspired.

69. Another trick we learned…

70. Write the press release first

71. It’s the best way to
align everyone on the
team with what you
expect from the end
result of the product.

72. Recap

73. Deciding what to build next
Say no before it gets into the product
Write the press release first
Process for handling feature requests

74. Align team to roadmap
Spend less time in meetings
Know what to build next

75. The GoSquared Team
Maintaining Focus in
Product Management
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