When growth work looks like product work, growth-team problems look like product-team problems. In this ProductTank San Francisco talk, Devan Goldstein, then Growth Product Lead at Dropbox, shows us how using product themes can help to focus growth teams.
Watch the video to see his talk in full. Or read on for an overview of his key points:
- How a growth team’s maturity affects the kinds of challenges it faces
- Operationalizing product themes
How Growth Teams and Product Teams Should Work Together
Younger growth teams can sometimes be high-velocity experimentation teams, throwing ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks. In a more mature growth team, you have more resources and therefore a greater obligation to be more strategic. The challenge is balancing high velocity with a strategy that’s bought into up and down the reporting chain.
For such teams, using product themes allows for a more limber approach to strategy and planning that allows for fast ideation, research and shippable code. This helps to build knowledge faster and keep un-roadmapped experimentation grounded.
Operationalizing Product Themes
Product themes should be synthesized from various research sources, preliminary hypotheses and internal interviews. They should be created, evaluated, prioritized, and retired according to new quantitative and qualitative insights and business priorities. Finally, they should be collaborated on through deep, healthy cross-functional partnerships with clear incentive alignment.
For high-velocity experimentation teams, product themes can fulfill the goals of other aspects of a typical product strategy while allowing for added flexibility. Teams that commit to using product themes should be ready to adapt to changes in the environment and to learnings as they emerge from the product development work itself.
