Today Product management has been recognized as a job role that impacts the business operations to a very large extent as it contains long term, mid-term goals and alongside the day-to-day operations. Many companies prefer to have multiple product departments, to handle different types of operations. The best example is with tech and non-tech related activities of the business.
My background of product management specializes under tech operations for long term along with the day-to-day work efforts. The biggest challenge for me has been analyzing and measuring the KPIs both types of operations. Also keeping a track of the ad hoc work which is equally important to get executed. So over the years I kept practicing various processes, many times customizing the process to suit the situation and finally found a good mix of practice.
Here is one that proved to be quite effective so far and with continuous practice can be “the one”. It is not the usual step by step process given but it comprises of the top level operational setup that should ensure your work processes to succeed
Automating Devops
Before you begin the planning of big and valuable goals for your business, it is imperative that you understand the way you dev team operates.
Many times this ignorance leads to blunders that are hard not only to resolve but to even identify why and what is happening behind the scenes.
My approach has always been to clean up the root cause of problems which are mostly to do with the man-made break-downs of code caused by urgency, stress and silly mistakes. Read this: better understanding of how tech processes can be improved
Move Out of Emails request
Use a ticketing system for all your request, this will ensure you have all your work logged in some place.
Setup workflows for your teammates, products like Jira are quite powerful when you have a larger team so you can assign specific duties to specific team members which can be easily automated/configured on the jira app.
Setup SLA to respond to each ticket so no ticket is left unanswered, then setup SLA for specific jobs completion so here you know simpler/everyday/high priority task can be closed within a stipulated time period.
All these issues will be a part of measuring strategy and ensure that no leaf has been left unturned.
Documentation of long/mid goals
If request that would take longer time periods and are complex in nature should be well documented with use cases and features. If it requires UI/UX planning - document it all together and link it up with the issue to update the requesters/business heads
Sprint Planning for such goals
Such documented work can be sprint planned which can be handed over to different team or sub-set of your daily-handling team after reviewing the workload on the ticketing system. This helps in ensuring that the resource is not overloaded and you have your regular product releases planned well enough.
You can set rules for team member for max limit of issues assigned and/or max issues a member can work on simultaneously.
Conduct Weekly MF Meeting with the tech-team - Monday and Friday
Conduct a Monday meet to discuss the weekly assigned work and to check the workload of the team members.Conduct a Friday meet to review the completed work and plan the agenda for Monday meet.
Don’t forget yourself here - check your own assigned work, so your weekly work is also planned out. Recommended to collate your top items on the same ticket system, doing so ensures clarity and transparency of the workload with the team.
Regular Meet-ups with the Requester
Conduct regular meet-ups with the requester who send in the request for work, so they are too aware of the status as we cannot/should not expect the requester to review the ticketing tool / finding email tickets in their inboxes for status updates. This can be planned out based on the importance/urgency of work requested, which can be tagged on the ticket system itself.
Testing Automation
You need to get this checked off your list as soon as possible otherwise it can interfere with your planned activities. Set a standard testing procedure with the team and QA testers - if you have more than one QA then shuffle and segregate the work regularly.
Use tools like UI/Functions testing tools like Selenium, Ghost Inspector and LoadTesting tools like Flood, LoadImpact and Performance Testing tools such as Google Lighthouse.
On these tools you can simulate the tests, and schedule to run regularly for report of any breaks/issues - which can be hooked up with your ticket system and devops.
Plan Regular Monthly activities (at least once a month) on all your applications and update respective business heads
Security & Vulnerabilities Patch Work
Server Review & Maintenance Performance Reviews & Optimizations
SEO Review & Optimizations
Notify team and business heads about the following regularly - these should be extracted from your ticketing tool
Weekly work review
Monthly KRA review and changes update (if any)
Send Quarterly updates of current and next qtr in the last week of every Qtr
To get the above done within an organization the time span can vary depending on the size of the team and how flexible the company is to add-on resources on need basis.
But fairly it takes about 6months-1 year to get setup done throughout the organization, this can be fully effective if all use it right from the top management to the core executives. The importance of the process is to be well understood and implemented - here is where your selling of the process comes into play.
This article just scratches the surface of how you can collate different operations within the product management job role ensuring minimalistic bugs or interfering issues. I'm hoping that it would help you a little when planning activities and later measuring if you met the planned goals.
If you want to collaborate, talk about process management, or just want to chat, you can connect with me. Happy managing!
Originally published on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-fool-measure-everything-aalia-dhurue/
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