How alignment and autonomy can help you ship product features - Mind the Product

In this #mtpcon SF+Americas 2022 breakout session, MaryAlexa Divver and Chase Disher, Directors of Product at Public.com discuss how alignment and autonomy can help product teams ship products quickly.

Watch this video or read on for key highlights from the talk.

Communication and collaboration for rapid feature rollout

Chase opened by discussing the period the organisation has been through in shipping products at a faster rate. Public.com’s mission has been to provide the right tools and information for its community to invest in a safe and effective manner.

To accomplish these goals, he explains how prompt, structured communication, and low ego, teams were able to iterate quickly to offer the best experience to their users, especially when certain aspects of the design and feature got too complex. Chase said, “The engineering and product team follow a shared vision, which enables individuals to collaborate more effectively and reduce friction due to having a shared understanding.”

Mary Alexa went on to explain how the key part of their organisation was to make public markets such as Crypto, available to a community. To fulfil this target, the company created a dedicated team to contribute to this larger goal. She said how at times in product, it’s important to pivot and iterate when the results aren’t going as planned. This is what the company experienced a few months down the road.

Key lessons learned

Throughout this journey of product and feature rollout, Chase and Mary Alexa explained their key lessons learned.

Bias towards execution

Being able to get products out into the wild and finding out what effect this has on your users is the best way to learn about your product. Once your new product or feature is live, you can then iterate and pivot going forward, Chase said.

Focus leads to autonomy

By creating dedicated teams for specific projects, teams are able to focus and specialise in specific areas without others disrupting regular tasks and plans. It creates a sense of ownership across a project, Mary Alexa added.

Optimise for the current company set-up

“Learn to prioritise appropriately and executive gives you the opportunity to be the most successful,” Chase said. Work and collaborate with your team to optimise the best-suited workloads for the team you have. More team members don’t always solve all of your problems.

Be open to changes along the way

Just because you decided something two weeks ago, this isn’t set in stone. Have open communication with your team regularly to constantly be receptive to feedback and changes. “Change is going to happen regardless so having those pivot frameworks in place gives you the ability to launch quickly without too many issues along the way.” Mary Alexa closed.

There’s more where that came from!

Explore more #mtpcon SF+Americas 2022 video content or use our Content A-Z to find even more product management insights.