Six Questions To Ask A Product Development Team In Trouble

We’ve all been a part of it.  A disorganized project with unrealistic deadlines and an indecisive client.  How can we turn this situation into a positive outcome that enables us to move forward?

To get the conversation started, get the internal team in a room and start with these six questions:

1. What has been asked of us?
It’s crucial to make sure that everybody is on the same page about the most critical asks from the client. Get everything out in the open – ideally on a whiteboard – so everyone’s on the same page.

2. What are our deadlines?
Write down the dates key deliverables are due. There may be one date or five depending on the size of the project, but usually we have multiple streams of work with multiple deadlines that need to be accounted for.

3. What are our streams of work?
Underneath each deliverable date, use stickies to define the workstream. One sticky may be interaction design, one may be visual, one copy, and the other development.

4. What needs to be designed and built?
The next step is to break down each stream of work into epics. Epics are a large body of work that may incorporate several features that people can clearly imagine and estimate.  If your team is creating a website examples may be a section of a site, like registration or the home page.  Write each epic on a note card sized sticky and label each one with the workstream associated with it.

5. How long will everything take?
A method using t-shirt sizing is a great way to collectively estimate large amounts of work in a very short period of time.  The exercise  involves giving epics a size (small, medium or large) rather than guessing a definite time.  Sizing functionality this way helps us understand the weight of each epic relative to other epics and avoids getting lost in the weeds.

6. How do we tell the client?
There isn’t always an easy way to have a difficult scoping conversation with a client.   Honesty and transparency generally have the best outcomes.  Now that we have estimates for all known streams of work broken into epics, we can use this data to help the client make decisions around timelines and priorities.  Deadlines may have to change, but this lets the client feel like they’re in control and lessens the blow if bad news has to be delivered.  Turn the conversation into relationship building and before you know it, you’re out of the trenches and onto product creation.