One of the most important risks is Team Fragmentation which is the symptom originated from cultural and organizational issues and/or purposelessly. It happens when formal role, level and responsibility area of team members are used— consciously or not — to handle team challenges, to ‘control their exposure’ and sometimes, to get their responsibility limit. A team like this, is categorized by internal ‘walls’ and ‘silos’ and not optimal.
To lead successfully a project, an inspired, talented team is essential for you to believe in your product vision and work with passion towards the common goal — a great product has all the predefined success criteria and to pride in the outcome!
It is not easy to set up a product development team that inspired, talented — it needs a combination of the right skills, characters and culture.
Have A TEAM
You should work with only one team, for an ambitious, meaningful objective. Introducing sub-teams, hierarchies, authorities, politics and bureaucracy, eroding the efforts and decreasing the chances for a successful and productive ‘one team’: add a few ‘little boxes’ and some additional structure and get ready for responsibility avoidance and separation of concerns (at the team level).
Communicate the vision
Whatever it is-- a product, a solution, a component or a prototype you are building— make sure you can draw a big picture for your team, so the strategy and the rationale behind significant decisions can be understood: everyone from the team needs to be able to know ‘what and why’ and relate to the mission. And, in my opinion, a great purpose and a bold vision are vital for a talented team.
Communicate the opportunity
You need to think big and articulate the opportunity. For instance, present how successful your release is will please your customers better, while flourishing and creating value for the company, the team and every member.
Be realistic
Sharing the big thinking and the opportunities is very important, you need to show the risks, the challenges and your strategy to minimize the threats. The readiness and willingness are essential for the team to make difficult decisions.
Inject some … entrepreneurial spirit
Modern project/product managers and leaders must think, feel and act as entrepreneurs: to build a great product and go to market, the company sets the mission and provides the resources. To make great things happen, resources such as talents, equipment and code need to be utilized in the best way. This startup and innovation mentality must be inherited from every single member of the team must contribute to the startup and innovation mentality.
Communicate effectively
Continuously discussing about the core vision and key messages. Make sure that the team maintains this entrepreneurial spirit — the main element of remarkable project or product execution.
Do not micromanage
Micromanagement is bad for talented engineering teams. If you feel it is necessary for micromanagement, you need to start seeking for the fundamental reasons; and they could be the exact characters (including yours), or other components — such as the dynamics or the specific state of the team.
Optimize your meetings
It is so regular to attend a meeting and immediately feel it is a waste of your precious time. As a product lead –as an intrapreneur — you need to optimize people’s time use. Only meaningful and actionable meetings and avoid unessential meetings. Also, make sure that just the right people attend in the room. Get them prepared before the meeting and leave the meeting with action items and clear ownership. Estimate the meetings and give positive feedbacks.
Make information and insights accessible
Information sharing is vital for a powerful product development team. A flow of updates, resources and ideas needs to be established to encourage collaboration and meaningful interactions. It should be easy for the team to discover and access updates, ideas, critical decisions and their justification, planning, strategies and anything that could remarkably affect the product development. They need to know the following and cause.
Remove formalities, eliminate bureaucracy
Formalities, roles and levels need to be ignored for the team to join. The shared objective needs to be deeply understood and trusted for a great product and. Also, the leaders need to properly execute the vision communication and special culture establishment.