Developing Productboard’s Product Management practice

We created our product strategy as an EPD Triad — and then added a fourth to make it a quad.

When Adam Davis first joined Productboard as a Principal Product Manager, he spent time understanding where product managers wanted to upskill and develop their core product management capabilities. One of the initiatives chosen to close skill gaps was through learning and development programs with the help of AND Digital, a consultancy that helps organizations accelerate their digital delivery. Together, they constructed a workshop series focused on product strategy and execution to deliver to the team — first onsite in Productboard’s Prague office.  

The notion of spending time discussing product strategy and execution was not a new one for our product managers, but what was unique and most impactful of this event was including the EPD Triad: our engineers, product managers and designers attended together, as a triad, to develop and align on their product strategy and explore new ways to quickly validate and execute on customer problems. 

Together in their groups, they directly applied the concepts of mission, vision, OKRs, and execution to the actual products they’re working on. To their surprise, getting the full range of perspectives, common goals, and mutual accountability made our teams feel much more empowered to win.

Here’s what one Engineer said about the experience: “It ignited discussions with my PM counterpart we were missing or were not going deep enough on; it also gave us some interesting tools to use going forward.”

Adam Davis facilitating the 2-day learning and development bootcamp alongside AND Digital. 

Another Engineer commented, “I have never been part of the whole process from creating product strategy to product execution.”

From triad to quad and its impact on product strategy

One of the most interesting takeaways from the day was increasing the triad to a quad through introducing the professional services team into the mix, representing the customer. We love this approach because it allowed the services team to challenge assumptions, insert their observations from customer engagements, and help us all come together on the strategy with the customer at the heart of it. 

We highly recommend trying a strategy workshop with the triad and a customer facing team member to round out the connection between what we’re building and trying to accomplish, and the rich learnings directly from a GTM team member.  

The two days also inspired the Professional Services team to bring the same type of approach and structure to their engagements with customers — particularly encouraging them to rally the triad together in strategy creation.

What we learned was that the EPD triad is a very powerful and important group of personas in creating your product strategy, and then adding the quad — a customer facing team member to it — really enriches the experience with that direct perspective on the voice and needs of the market. 

If you try a workshop like this, we’d love to hear how it goes! 

Adam Davis is a Principal Product Manager at Productboard, and his role is to develop Productboard’s Product Management practice by nurturing their learning and growth program. Layla Selick is the Sr Director of Professional Services at Productboard; she leads a global team of professionals that help organizations become more product driven.