Handling a High-Stakes Product Initiative - follow up story

Leading with Agility

What happened after writing a recent Product Management IRL article? These insights are for premium subscribers to Product Management IRL.

This week’s backstory is about handling an urgent and high-visibility product initiative:

Rising to the Challenge of a High-Stakes Product Initiative

What Prompted this Article?

My boss put me on a very urgent product initiative. It was so urgent that he removed my other initiatives and assigned 3 product managers to work with me. Failing this initiative would be a failure for our whole team.

The product initiative was needed to automate internal processes. With the manual processes, heavy pre-sales checks are needed for every sale. The product offering cannot grow with the heavy effort for every sale.

The scary part is I have a tight deadline to deliver and grow the product. On top of this challenge, all products are being scrutinized by the executive team for cost reductions.

I needed to get the initiative going quickly. The article laid out the following steps:

1. Agree to clear objectives

2. Build a cross-functional team and roadmap

3. Communicate transparently

4. Manage risks and dependencies

5. Celebrate successes and learning

Since the initiative is urgent and has 4 different executive sponsors, I planned to be more active on the project management side of this initiative.

With this approach in mind, I wrote the article with these 5 steps.

What Happened After this Article?