How to define and implement product principles

As a PM, the time it takes your team to make decisions defines how much progress you can make. However, speed isn’t everything. You need to be consistent, otherwise users will churn towards a more reliable solution.

When decision-making lacks structure, you may observe undesired behavior like:

Lengthy discussions before calling the shots
Resistance to make decisions
Inconsistent decision-making across teams
Uncertainty about what a good decision looks like

My view on decision-making is simple. A poor decision is often better than no decision because at least it creates a learning opportunity, whereas no decision just leaves your team stuck in the mud.

Your decision-making doesn’t need to be complex. Instead, make sure that your team aligns on what matters most by adopting a set of product principles.

This article walks you through product principles, including how to set them, how to use them in your daily work, challenges you may encounter, and key principles for success.

The importance of product principles

Product principles help you simplify decision-making by enabling alignment without the need for lengthy discussions.

Martin Eriksson, Co-Founder of Mind the Product, says:

“Your principles are a framework for your decisions. They’re specific and actionable rules which are a manifestation of your vision. A useful starting point might be to use ‘even over’ statements, as these explicitly indicate what your organization values in trade-off situations.”

When you ignore product principles, you make it more difficult to achieve your vision and strategy. Eriksson created the decision stack framework, which helps you understand the critical role product principles play in product development. Without sound principles, teams have no chance but to discuss every decision they face:

Martin Eriksson

How to set product principles

Crafting your product principles can take time and the process varies depending on your organization’s size and unique challenges. That said, you need to clarify the following before you can set your principles:

Ideal customer profile — Define who your primary audience is so you can set principles for prioritization. For example, you might determine that guests take precedent over hosts. This let’s you make a decision quickly because you already know who to focus on
User experience — What’s the experience level you want to provide? Define it so you can craft principles that smooth decision-making. Say you agree on intuitive usability over guided experience
Boundaries — What lines can you not cross? These represent your boundaries and you should respect them. In this case, you could agree to select the best product option instead of aiming for consensus
Quality standards — Define how you perceive quality. In some industries, mistakes are unacceptable, while others treat them as steps towards success

As you define these, it becomes easier to craft your product principles. The process of coming up with your statements tends to take one of two approaches:

Top-down — Leadership defines the principle and informs the product teams. This approach can work if the product teams relate to the principle, but it’ll be ignored if they can’t connect with it. A hybrid approach works better where leadership presents a draft and sharpens the principles with the team
Bottom-up — When teams develop principles, they have a strong feeling of ownership. However, they still need to win support from leadership. A collaborative approach can work but remember that leadership ultimately needs to sign-off

I recommend starting simple, reflecting on how the principles can help you, and adapting accordingly. You don’t need to be perfect from the start. Adapt and collaborate with your team until you land on something successful.

Using product principles in daily work

Product principles come into play whenever you find yourself faced with a decision. They help you accelerate decision-making by giving you a head start so that you spend less time pondering and more time doing.

I find two approaches helpful for using the principles you craft:

Make it interactive — In a few places where I worked, we had cards representing our principles. Everyone on the team had the same cards and someone would raise a card whenever a decision went against a principle. This enabled the team to step back and return to our agreed upon guidance
Rule-based — To help ensure your team follows your principles, assign someone the task of mandating that during your next product session everyone remains in alignment. You can rotate the role so no one person feels like they need to “police” the others. This works especially well for process-oriented teams

Common challenges with product principles

You know just as well as I do how much change occurs in product management. Because of this, it’s important that you routinely check-in on your principles to make sure they still make sense for you. I recommend you look at your:

Usage — How often do you use each of your principles? If you find yourself ignoring a few of your principles, they might not be relevant to your goals anymore. Try to audit what you have and push on anything that hasn’t received attention
Benefits — When you use your principles, are the results satisfying, or do you face troubles? Your principles are only worthwhile if they consistently aid the success of your product
Struggles — What are the current challenges with decision-making? Look where your choices get complicated and assess whether you have a principle that covers it. You might find you need to create a new one
Stories — Look for real stories where principles helped you and why so you can leverage that. Stories move people

After the review, commit to three actions to continuously evolve your principles.

4 categories of product principles

Throughout my career, I’ve seen many teams with varying product principles. I find that it helps to have different principles for different levels. The following organization works for me:

4 Categories

Strategy

Focus on the goal and say no to distractions — Prioritization is key. Define one goal at a time and give it your entire focus
Stop starting, start finishing — Serialize work so teams reduce context switching as much as possible
Dare to take risks — Don’t play it safe. Try a few bold ideas

Discovery

Start with what you know before you step into the unknown — Confronting reality is critical to uncover hidden opportunities
First build to learn, then to scale — Strive to build just enough, then scale once you know what works
Evidence talks louder than opinions — Don’t let unchecked opinions distract you

Delivery

Continuously measure the impact of your work — Assess the impact your team drives so you understand when to adapt the course
Good enough is better than perfect — The sooner customers interact with your product, the quicker you learn what drives value
Simplify whenever you can — Strive to reduce complexity whenever possible

Collaboration

Meet your audience where they are, not where you want them to be — Create natural solutions for your audience instead of forcing them to adopt yours
Establish alignment instead of pleasing everyone — You don’t need to please everyone, but you do need to get everyone on the same page
Focus on solving current problems over future problems — Working on current problems is way more important than getting bugged with issues you don’t and may never have

Key takeaways

Crafting digital products requires a ton of decision-making. The faster and more effectively you can make them, the more progress you can make. To this end, use product principles to help remove some of the guesswork and align your team around a central vision.

The key takeaways from this post include:

Product principles relate to your context and situation. While you may use other companies’ principles as inspiration, you should adapt them to your situation to make them stronger
Collaboration with teams and leadership is essential to craft relevant principles and bring them into your daily activities
Review your product principles every three months and take action to make them more relevant and impactful
To make using your principles more natural, categorize them into different layers, such as strategy, discovery, delivery, and collaboration

Featured image source: IconScout

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