Prioritizing internal product management in your startup's planning cycle
How to to make space for important infrastructure work, while you’re living in a state of urgency.
Notion wikis need gardening. Slack channels need archiving. RASCI charts need updating. The reason that it’s hard to operate a startup is because how you operate changes frequently. But these necessary operational tasks are often thrown to the bottom of the to-do list, considered low-value and time-intensive.
There’s a secret to greasing these gears and working well without having it feel like a fruitless effort. It’s as simple as using these tenants of internal product management as a means to solve startup problems that are holding you back from growing the bottom line. Let’s dig in.
how DO you prioritize this important work instead of constantly pushing it to the back burner until you’re left with an out-of-control operational fire?
Frame expert internal product management as the solution to key startup problems
Why This Works
Building the infrastructure of your startup seems like the least important activity in the suite of projects and tasks focused on keeping the startup running and driving revenue. However, if you frame your operations not as a cost center but rather as a revenue-driving superpower to solve your most pressing problems and, in turn, make your people happier, you will improve team efficiency and retention (and maybe even save you the cost of an additional hire). This will result in internal product management being an activity that will be both welcomed and prioritized.
Why Do This Now
We’ve said it before but will reiterate this important, oft-overlooked point; operational debt can be as debilitating as tech debt. The quicker and earlier you invest time in building internal product management best practices into your org, the faster your startup will move and the happier you and your team will be. Instead of being reactive and spending six months to solve a problem, take three months to be proactive and get in front of future problems. These are gifts to your future startup self, and the team you’re continuing to build.
how We Do: Creating space for internal product management in your project planning & roadmap
Quick refresher --
Internal product management (noun) man·age·ment: IPM is the art and science of delivering business impact by coordinating tools, processes, and people to work cohesively together so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
We’ve highlighted a few common, yet impactful, IPM problems that startups face daily and connected them to the greater why (and the ROI) behind spending time, attention, and resources on fixing them before they get out of control.
If you’re playing a game of telephone in your 1:1s, and projects aren’t getting done because you’re losing track of decisions…
Clean your Communication Channels
Your team lives in Slack day in and day out. New messages are sent, members are added, channels are created, and communication flows freely. But how often do you review your feeds and processes to clean up and archive old messages? Reducing the clutter saves your team precious time and removes unnecessary bloat. A message sent into an inactive channel just floats in the abyss.
If your internal reports aren’t lining up to what you know to be true…
Audit your knowledge management database
Similar to Slack, your knowledge management database makes it very easy to create new pages and topics as needed. Spend some time reviewing these pages to cut back on unnecessary data management. Just as you don’t want to dig through a file cabinet looking for a specific piece of paper, no need to spend time digging through your digital file cabinet.
Does everyone on the team know what they need to be updating, and how to work your internal systems so the data output is automated and accurate? Oftentimes misalignment stems from the simple fact that these processes aren’t written down, and are rather passed along from meeting to meeting. Get ‘em down on paper, and you’ll notice a difference in how your data administration is being managed.
If you’re noticing a functional team member or team isn’t keeping pace with the rest of the org…
Dust off your SOPs
How you do what you do is part of your special sauce. Ensuring your SOPs are accurate and up-to-date not only reduces administrative burden, but it allows new folks on your team to achieve self-sustainability quicker. This unlocks other members of your team from having to pull back from actual work to hold the hands of new team members. A strong culture of accurate SOPs creates a quicker onboarding loop, protection against departures, and ensures your systems flow smoothly.
If someone isn’t performing up to snuff, do you know how they’re doing what they’re doing? Are they following the original operating system, or has the business outpaced this set of processes? Ensure what the team is doing is aligned with where you are.
If you’re chasing your team for updates in Slack, and your team is running out of time to complete tasks because they’re busy responding to ad hoc messages for status updates…
Tidy up your project management tool
Just as you don’t want unnecessary clutter in your knowledge management tool, no need to keep projects open and visible once they have been completed. Ensuring that your PM tool is accurate not only reduces administrative burden, but it allows you to use the tool the way it was intended and the way you envisioned it when you first subscribed - as a birds-eye view into your operations. Having clear visibility into active work allows you to get a sense of open projects, bottlenecks, and most importantly, capacity for more revenue-driving work - at a glance.
Tools 🛠️
Lean on the archive function! No need to delete a section that you might want to refer to later. Archive it - out of sight, out of mind - while knowing it can still be accessed if needed.
Consider tools such as Notion or Hoop to push important decisions or content into an easily searchable knowledge base to create historical logs.
Parrot.ai can serve as a way for you to easily capture insights and meetings in a manner that is accessible on an as-needed basis.
Lean on ChatGPT to assist you when you reach a fork in the road or quickly need data insights.
Rules (Process) 📝
Encourage monthly (or quarterly audits) to review and archive channels about topics that are no longer in use.
Establish expectations early and often.
Repeat these expectations to ensure they are the standard. No need to micromanage when the team is aligned.
Carve out space to convey that this is important, impactful work.
It doesn't need to take a lot of time, especially if this maintenance is performed regularly.
People 🫶
Task members of your team with oversight of the specific channels that fall under their functional area.
Of course, you should keep your finger on this pulse too, but no need to manage it from the ground floor.
Make sure you aren’t overburdening specific members of your team.
Build reviews into the fabric of your culture and they become second nature.
Actually Actionable
Nice article. Now what?
As we’ve shared in a prior article, we’ve taken the ideas above and reframed an action plan for you and your team.
Objective 1: Establish a regular monthly tool audit
Meeting 1: Build a tracker that manages access and usage (1 Hour).
Meeting 2: Meet with specific members of your team monthly to ensure there is clarity and visibility into how and why a tool is being used – and who has ownership of maintaining the tool (1 Hour).
Objective 2: Create space for weekly reflections
Meeting 1: Meet with your team at the end of each week to provide a brief opportunity for housekeeping to reflect on the wins (and struggles) of the prior week (1 Hour).
Review 1: Review weekly reflections to ensure your tools, rules, and people are aligned and the team feels valued and appreciated while upholding the values of the company (.5 Hours)
Objective 3: Make the implicit explicit
Meeting 1: Meet with your team monthly to bridge the gap on your SOPs to determine what’s missing, what’s changed, and what needs to be codified and/or updated (1 Hour).
Before you go
There will always be fires. There will always be a preference towards traditional, revenue-driving work. Frequently, the thorniest issues your business faces, as well as the ones that prevent your revenue growth from matching your aspirations, are closely linked to the tools, processes, and teams you employ, as well as the systems they operate within. Recognizing that common startup problems have deeply rooted internal product management solutions will help you prioritize these, and plan effectively to reach your startup goals.
Writer: Britt