This is Part 2 of a three part series on high performing product teams.

Five building blocks of a high performing product team. 

Last week we explored the 5 key dimensions Google uses to create high performing product teams.

They are,

• Psychological Safety
• Dependability
• Structure
• Meaning, and
• Impact

You can read the whole article here.

This week we will focus on how to assess the health of your current product team.  

Google routinely audits their product teams using the following assessment 

The assessment consists of the following 15 questions.  

You can download the pdf version here.

Psychological Safety:

• Team members feel comfortable brainstorming product ideas and solutions in front of each other?
• Team members feel they can experiment and fail openly without being shunned?  Or reprimanded
• Team members do not feel as if others try to undermine them deliberately?

Dependability:

• When team members say they’ll get something done, do they do it
• Team members proactively communicate with each other about delays and assume responsibility
• All team members can be relied upon to do quality product work (e.g product strategy, discovery, prototyping etc.)

Structure:

• Team members know what the product goals/OKRs are and how to achieve them
• Team members feel like they have autonomy and ownership
• Roles and responsibilities are clear and reasonable

Meaning:

• Does the work give team members a sense of personal and professional fulfillment?
• Is the work matched to the team member’s skills, ability, and interest?
• Is the work aligned with the team member’s personal values?

Impact:

• Are the product goals well defined, measurable, and attainable?
• Do team members see their product as creating change for the better?
• Do team members feel their product matters for a higher-order goal?

If you like to learn more about general team effectiveness, visit Google re:Work.

How do your teams stack up?

If you want to find out how your teams stack up against these 5 characteristics, consider the following two options.

First, if you are looking for a quick pulse check.  Do the survey yourself and find out how well your team is performing.

Second, if you want to go deeper, do the survey with your team. Here is what I have done in the past,

1. Gather all the product team members into a (virtual) room.
2. Ask each member to score and rank the questions individually
3. Aggregate the results right then and there
4. Discuss
5. Put a plan in action to address issues

The magic really happens during the discussion and the plan that follows.  We will cover practical tips and ideas that you can add to your plan, in part 3 of this article series.  

You can download the full assessment here.

Download Product Team Health Check

Happy Building!!