In this great keynote at #mtpcon London 2023, Jane Austin, Chief Product Officer at Juniver, offers some ways to get product and design teams working together better. Watch the video in full, or read on for highlights from her talk.

Key takeaways:

• Product and design struggle with each other in a number of ways
• To overcome this, know what research to do at the right time
• Concentrate on high-leverage activities that maximise impact
• Reframe your MVP
• Don’t hand solutions to the team
• Understand the context of your team and use collaboration tools and frameworks that are appropriate for them

How do you get the best out of your design team?

Most product managers have never worked as a designer, says Jane, but many will end up having responsibility for design in their organisation. Jane – who has moved from design into product – observes that product and design are like England and America, two nations divided by a common language.

Jane did some research before her talk to try to understand the frustrations that product and design people have with each other. “A lot of it is about the right or the wrong kind of research,” she says, “some of it is about spending time on the wrong thing or feeling that you’re too stretched.”

She summarises the ways in which product and design teams struggle with each other.

1. What research do we need?
2. Too much work, too little team
3. MVPlease no!
4. Handing solutions to the team
5. Rubbing each other up the wrong way

Her solutions to these issues are shown below:

What research do we need – right research, right time

Jane has a framework to articulate product strategy over time. It’s a three-layered pyramid that shows futures or product vision at the top, features or roadmap in the middle, and frictions or data and analytics at the base.

She tells a story from her time at online print shop Moo.com. One of the product managers discovered a bit of the product that was “pretty rubbish” but still gave them huge amounts of revenue. They did some quant research and found that the people using it were one-man band professional designers who were buying prints on behalf of their clients. This insight allowed Moo.com to build a new feature and unlock a new audience segment. “I’m a huge believer that you need qual and you need quant,” says Jane.

To know what research to do at the right time, says Jane, you must break everything down to its most foundational pieces. Jane uses the Riskiest Assumption Canvas to ask what they actually know, and where they are making assumptions, “then we understand the biggest risk if we get it wrong”. It means the team can focus their time and effort on the research and work that really matters

Too much work, too little team – high leverage activities

Jane references the term high leverage activities from the book High Output Management by Andrew Grove, where a bit of effort unlocks outsized value. She says a high leverage activity for a product person is to frame the strategy, business needs and user problem so that the team can understand what they’re working on and what they need to focus on to deliver impact and differentiation.

MVPlease no! – Agree the MVP

Many of the designers Jane spoke to felt that MVP was something that was done in a rush and never reworked. She suggests reframing what the MVP is and thinking about it as “the least you can do to give you the strongest signal that you’re right and ready to take the next step”. It means starting with an hypothesis that has a dependent variable, an independent variable and a predicted effect.

Handing solutions to the team – a solution to solutionising

Jane suggests using Teresa Torres’ Opportunity Solution Tree and explains the elements that make up this framework. She gives an example from her own experience of a car company that wanted to sell direct to consumers. She says: “everything I’ve shown you here is about collaboration, teams working together… they’re basically artefacts that allow conversation and for the team to come together and solve problems together.”

Rubbing each other up the wrong way – Collaborate for the win

Collaboration is fundamental in delivering great products, Jane says. She says that the unit of delivery is the team and every team is unique. Referencing US lawyer Oliver Wendell Holmes, she says that mastery is also about simplicity. She says: “Make sure you understand the context of your team and use collaboration tools and frameworks that are appropriate for them rather than something you picked up from a book or a conference. Have the courage and calmness to focus on the things that really matter.”

You should also focus on feedback, but avoid directional feedback and instead give a critique and discuss how the design supports the objective. Jane says it takes mastery, autonomy and purpose to be good at a job.

Want to turn the learning from this talk into action?

Our exciting #mtpcon London 2023 Keynote Kit brings you all of the insights from our London keynote talks plus additional helpful discussion points and thought starters so you can easily translate the insights into actions – perfect for making effective improvements to your role, team, and product. Plus, get an email notification when each talk is published! Sign up now.