Responsible Product Management, Shaping a Better Future with

© 2023 Thoughtworks Alexander Steinhart | @quanders
Shaping a Better Future with
Responsible
Product
Management
Alexander Steinhart, @quanders
March 28 2023

© 2021 Thoughtworks 2
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© 2023 Thoughtworks Alexander Steinhart | @quanders 5
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5
Why do we talk about
Responsible tech?

Value
6
Value (/ˈvaljuː/),noun
the importance, usefulness or worth of
something for someone
Cambridge Dictionary
Let’s talk about it

Value
7
How do we find value?
Innovation
Desirability
(human)
Viability
(business)
Feasibility
(technical)

Value
8
Product
Desirability
(human)
Viability
(business)
Feasibility
(technical)
Product Management

Business and technology
9
Business Business Business
Supporting role Collaboration Tech-led differentiation Tech@Core
Tech
Tech
Tech
Business
and Tech
3rd Industrial Revolution
information as a resource
4th Industrial Revolution
technology at the heart of value
Technology moved to the core of business

Society and technology
Society and
Individual
Society and
Individual
Society and
Individual
Supporting role Tech@Core
Tech
Tech
Tech
Society
and Tech
3rd Industrial Revolution
information as a resource
4th Industrial Revolution
technology at the heart of value
Technology is at the core of society - and we technologists have great power

What comes to mind when you think of
technology being problematic?
Examples could be something you heard in the news, or from personal experience.
11

https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing
https://www.pråopublica.org/article/how-we-analyzed-the-compas-recidivism-algorithm

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/sep/05/i-didnt-want-it-anywhere-near-me-how-the-apple-airtag-became-a-gift-to-stalkers

https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/09/29/bitcoins-environmental-damage-is-on-par-with-beef-natural-gas-and-oil-study-suggests

Little things can
have far-reaching
consequences
15

Environmental
challenge

The need for
systemic thinking
18
Take people and planet into account
3 Nested Dependencies Model
Adapted from Peter Senge et al, The Necessary Revolution
Environment
(Planet)
Society
(People)
Economy
(Profit)

Value
19
Innovation
Desirability
(human)
Viability
(business)
Feasibility
(technical)

Value
20
How do we find value today?
Sustainable
Innovation
Desirability
(human)
Viability
(business)
Feasibility
(technical)
Responsibility
(individual, society,
environment)
Further reading: Moving beyond financial value, Design Council, 2020

Value
21
How do we find value today?
Product
Desirability
(human)
Viability
(business)
Feasibility
(technical)
Responsibility
(individual, society,
environment)
Responsible
Product Management

93%
of consumers say companies
have a responsibility to look
beyond profit to positively
impact society
75%
of consumers would
consider not buying from a
company that demonstrates
poor ethics
52%
of consumers say they’re
more worried about
technology’s ethical issues
than they were a year ago
Why act now?
There is rising pressure for technologists to be held accountable
for the impacts of what they create.
Expectations are shifting for the role of business in the world
Trust &
Trustworthiness
Keeping
consumers’ &
employees’ trust in
the business,
processes and
solutions you offer
becomes key.
Source: Salesforce's Ethical
Leadership and Business Report

Increased
Revenue
Decreased
Costs
Decreased Risk
(Reputation, Talent,
Regulation, Innovation)
Universal (for-profit) business cases
Three universal (for-profit) business cases for companies to consider ethics

What is
Responsible
Product
Management?
24
2

SUSTAINABILITY
25
25
ETHICS & DATA
(BIAS IN AI, DATA
GOVERNANCE,
RESPONSIBLE AI...)
SECURITY
ACCESSIBILITY
AND INCLUSIVE
DESIGN
VALUES AND
CONSEQUENCE
CHECKING
PRIVACY
GREEN
TECH
Responsible
tech areas we
come across
frequently
DEI
(Workforce)
Source: TW internal Responsible tech research 2022
CSR

Responsible Product Management
Responsible product management extends product
management with a way of working that aligns technology
and business behavior with environmental, societal, and
individual interests.
It includes the mindset to consider values,
unintended consequences and negative impacts of tech
in order to actively reduce risk and wrong doing. And to
capitalize on opportunities.
26
26

Let’s put ethics into action
27
doing better
doing good
don’t do evil
evil
deceptive
Moving the needle to the left

How do we apply it?
28
3

Anticipation, Values & Principles, and Culture
Three key elements to integrate Responsible tech more broadly and shift-left
Anticipation
Values &
Principles
Responsible
Culture
Values &
Principles

Anticipation
Anticipation
Values &
Principles
Responsible
Culture
Values &
Principles

- Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

We’re great problem solvers…
32
Problem Solution

Intended consequences
Unintended consequences
increases
carbon
footprint
excludes
certain
groups
decreases
trust
promotes
addiction
tricks into
consent
increases
efficiency
social
polarization
new
markets
better
usability
Solution
…but we’re also great problem creators
imbalance
with
partners

Capitalize
34
Mitigate
Decide
Anticipate
Responsible Innovation Process: Anticipate
What might be intended and
unintended consequences of this*?
*vision, strategy, product, feature, design, implementation…
a.o. Cennydd Bowles; DotEveryone

Add anticipation to
your process - and keep
building that muscle
Prototype
Measure
& Monitor
Learn
Mitigate or
Capitalize
Anticipate
Responsible
Experimentation
In the big and small picture: identify
process steps, ways of working, and artifacts
and add an anticipation scanning step.
Ideas or
Problems
Insights
Build

36
Anticipate: Prompts help you to think beyond
What could this mean
to people in their
professional life?
How could this affect
different markets?
What could this mean if
everyone in the world
were doing it?
How could this affect
the communities you
operate in?
for wellbeing or
relationships?
Who else does your
user experience your
product with?
to the consumers of
your product?
Have you considered
security, reliability,
support & monitoring,
understandability?
Prompts provided by DotEveryone’s Consequence Scanning

37
Prompts provided by Artefact Group's Tarot Cards of Tech

38
Prompts provided by Omidyar Network's Ethical Explorer

Things you might find
39
Intended Consequences Unintended Consequences
Sales Tool
‘Reduce stress and confusion by
multiple tools and offer one source
instead’
‘Salesperson may feel they are taken
more seriously by the effort that
went into creating a better tool’
‘Supporting the sales person with
"expert" functionality might decrease
the transparency for customers’
‘No gender-neutral language
⟶ women might feel excluded when
they see the UI.
E-Commerce
Partner Tool
‘Partners can offer better service to
their customers’
‘Exclusion of partners due to partner
size as they are small’
Examples

Values & Principles
Anticipation
Values &
Principles
Responsible
Culture
Values &
Principles

Making a Vision the Reality
How to move from Vision to Delivery by Marty Cagan - it’s not enough
Product Vision Describes the future you are trying to create;
Team Topology Defines how structure your teams;
Product Strategy Helps us decide which problems to solve;
Team Objectives Assigns those problems to product teams;
Product Discovery Helps us discover a solution; and
Product Delivery Builds that solution to bring it to market.

Making Values a Reality
How to move from Vision to Delivery by Marty Cagan, extended
Values & Principles Set what is important and guide action;

experience
of privacy
and
security
Honesty
There is no neutral technology but great values
Explicit values and principles offer space for reflection and guidance, examples
Principles show
what’s good and
guide action.
Values set what
is important.
‘for those who
follow their dream’
(u.a. freedom,
autonomy)
Transparency
Accountability
Respect
‘create a better
everyday life for the
many people’
(u.a. equity, inclusion)
rightly
present
data
balance tech and
business with
individual, society,
environment
(u.a. responsibility,
trust, accountability)
Trust

Making Values a Reality
How to move from Vision to Delivery by Marty Cagan, extended
Values & Principles Set what is important and guide action;
e.g. informes problem and feature choice
e.g. translates into cross-functional requirements
(CFRs) and acceptance criterias (ACs)
Every feature
and its users
experience is a
proof of your
values and
principles.

Many ways to your
values and principles
Methodology:
Value Sensitive
design, Value-based
Engineering (VbE), …
45
Anticipation: Explore
risk areas and drive
guardrails from it
Company
values
Get started with one or two values today
Further reading: Friedman, Batya; Hendry, David G. (2019). Value Sensitive Design:
Shaping Technology with Moral Imagination. MIT Press. IEEE 7000™-2021 – IEEE
Standard Model Process for Addressing Ethical Concerns During System Design
Moral values: e.g.
human rights,
environmental
sustainability
multiple values, with a focus on ethics
and morality; explicit and integrated
some values explicit
no values explicit
Fluency
high
low

46
Carbon Dashboard
Example principle:
“We will not knowingly misrepresent data”
➔ We involve those that own the data
➔ We thoroughly check our calculations
➔ We are transparent at how we come
up with figures
1. Identify probable risk
zones
2. Imagine the
worst-case scenario
3. Use these scenarios to
create a set of
principles for the team
Example: From anticipation to principles

47
Accessibility and
inclusivity
Example: Universal Design Principles
https://universaldesign.ie

Responsible culture
Anticipation
Values &
Principles
Responsible
Culture
Values &
Principles

Your own
ethics and
journey
Diversity,
Equity &
Inclusion
(DEI)
Save space
and
continuous
learning
Conversation
on power
dynamics
How you work
with others
and honor
expertise
49
Responsible culture
49
Culture sets the foundation, complements, and extends

Anticipation, Values and Principles, and Culture
Three key elements to consider more nowadays
Anticipation
Values &
Principles
Responsible
Culture
Values &
Principles

Anticipation
Values &
Principles
Responsible
Culture
Values &
Principles
Anticipation, Values and Principles, and Culture
51
They support each other - example: privacy
Privacy as privilege
Defaults and Design
(e.g. handle data that is
needed only)
$ Privacy as
differentiation
! Lost trust, fines
Special Privacy features
What’s your relationship to
people and your users?
Prompts on
the topic

Anticipation
Values &
Principles
Responsible
Culture
Values &
Principles
Key pieces of Responsible Product Management
It’s a starting point. We all have blind spots, stay open.
What else do you
think needs to be
considered?
Please post in the
chat or in the video’s
comments.

Value is changing
- skate to where the puck
is going to be
Impact of tech is larger
- more responsibility
People care
- keeping trust is essential
Responsible Product Management is key today
Summary
Society
and
Tech

Anticipation
Values &
Principles
Responsible
Culture
Where to start
Summary
Values &
Principles
Leader
● Are anticipation, values & principles, and a
responsible culture explicitly addressed in
your general strategy and practices? If not,
how can they be?
Practitioner
● Do an anticipation session (see playbook) on
your product, and/or
● transform one company values into a product
principle and start working with it, and/or
● discuss who should be your next team
member to increase your team’s diversity.

The Responsible Tech
Playbook
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A guide to the tools and practices that
help businesses make better technology
decisions.

Thank you
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Standing on their shoulders, inspiring, or
providing feedback…
Andy Birds ◦ Artefact Group ◦ Batya
Friedmann ◦ Cennydd Bowles ◦ Christoph
Hassler ◦ David G. Hendry ◦ David Ryan
Polgar ◦ DotEveryone ◦ Eduardo Meneses ◦
Elise Zelechowski ◦ Enza Iannopollo ◦ Frank
Buytendijk ◦ Guy Samuel ◦ Imo Udom ◦
James Emmott ◦ Jeantine Mankelow ◦ Joe
Edelman ◦ Jörg Rheinboldt ◦ Kat Zhou ◦
Katharine Jarmul ◦ Kathy Pham ◦ Marty
Cagan ◦ Natalie Hollier ◦ Nina da Hora ◦
Rumman Chowdhury ◦ Sara Watson ◦ Sarah
Spiekermann ◦ Sheryl Cababa ◦ Tristan Harris
◦ Vanessa Andreotti ◦ and many more…

Alexander Steinhart
asteinhart@thoughtworks.com
@quanders
57
"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."
- William James

Appendix
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58

LEAN INCEPTION AGENDA
w/ responsible tech
Lunch
Morning
Afternoon
More on Lean Inceptions you can find here.
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Kick off
add Responsible Strategy
Elements
add a section about fears to
Persona template: What don’t
they want from
product/company? What
values do they hold?
add an Ethical Explorer
session to get first
product principles (will
add 1 ½ hrs to the
agenda)
Showcase
add to way of
workings when
you monitor &
recheck for
unintended
consequences
Product Vision Persona Tech, UX &
Business
Review
Sequencer MVP Canvas
Is - Is not -
Does not do
Features
brainstorming
User Journeys Journeys &
Features
Wrap - Up

DESIGN SPRINT AGENDA w/ RESPONSIBLE TECH
60
© 2023 ThoughtWorks
4 - 14 days
Preparation Wrap-up
add Responsible
Strategy
Elements
add an Ethical
Explorer session
go beyond
problem-solution
check and find
out what
users/persona
‘don’t want’ and
their ‘fears’
add to way of
workings when
you monitor &
recheck for
unintended
consequences
360 degree
systems mapping
More on Design Springs you can find here and here.

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