The Waiter
Is your team only building items the customer demands? Is your team in a permanent reactive state where they don’t lead the product but rather react to external opinions and suggestions? Perhaps your product is no longer following the vision you originally created?
Not to worry, this has happened to all of us and it is 100% possible to course correct. This anti-pattern is best described as “The Waiter” pattern. Imagine being a waiter at a restaurant. As a waiter, you go from table to table taking orders from your customers and dealing with issues as they arise. Now, translate this to product management where you are running from customer to customer and instantly implementing what the users are telling you they need. The result is that the team becomes inundated with requests and struggles to get ahead and build a cohesive strategy and direction for the future of the product.
The way I have solved this in the past is to recognize that the team means well first and foremost. The team is doing what they believe is best, serving the needs of the users and stakeholders alike. In order to solve this anti-pattern, first start to figure out how to reduce and/or better manage incoming requests and bug reports. Additionally, can you improve the UX so that users better understand how to use the product? Can you automate the capture and organization of incoming requests? Can you create a backlog process that better categorizes these incoming request in order to determine if they align with the product vision? All of these approaches will help to reduce the customer inquiries as well as get a handle on incoming items.
In parallel to improving the handling of incoming requests and bug tickets, it’s time to revisit the vision and strategy for the product with the team. One way this can be done is in the form of a workshop with the team where the team collaborates to define (or redefine) the product vision and metrics for success (please see my post on 3 Questions for Empowered Product Teams for possible questions to answer in this workshop).
Lastly, when it comes time to plan out work be sure to look at each item on your roadmap and think about what problem you are solving along with the associated outcome you are striving for. Start to get out in front of current development activities and chart a course to align with the vision you have laid out. Remember there is nothing wrong with taking suggestions from users and customers, in fact this should be encouraged. But, please look at each of these requests carefully as you consider whether or not it makes sense as part of your product offering.