Product Coaching

What is a product coach?

A product coach is someone who coaches product teams and the organization on best-practice product management. Depending on the need of the organization it may be an interim or permanent role such as head of product.

The product coach is known to help align the organization's business vision & strategy with the product portfolio vision and strategy across all products by coaching the product managers and teams along with senior management across the organization.

How old is the role?

As product function maturity grows, there was an increase in product-led organizations, commonly where organizations move from digital projects to products.

This has created a growing requirement of experienced product people who are able to work across an organization.

Typically, product coaches work from the break room to the board room and help coach all levels of the organization in product management frameworks, ways of working, and business/product vision & strategy.

How do I hire a product coach?

This is where we come in.

We specialize in building a network of product coaches globally who can help your organization.

These coaches are vetted by us before being recommended to you.

To hire a product coach today, click on the button below and email us the role requirements of your organization, not sure what you need? Email us to see how we can help you assess that.

What are the benefits of a product coach?

Product coaches help build and enable product teams to work on products that solve customer problems and help build great products that customers love.

Especially the product trio - product managers, designers, and tech leads on ways to identify value and build value, ultimately driving hyper-growth in an organization.

When the "Agile" and "Lean Startup Movement", started it resulted in the widespread adoption of "Scrum".

Agile Project Organizations vs. Empowered Product Organizations

In this article, we compare both approaches & highlight their unique benefits, helping orgs choose the best approach for their goals & culture, leading to successful outcomes.

airfocus, GmbH

This was assumed to be the silver bullet but instead led organizations into just improving product development (delivery) only.

Thus leading to feature factories and essentially resulting in the organization being stuck in the "build trap".

When you hire a product coach they help improve your team's capability by addressing the core needs of desirability, feasibility, and viability of products.

A product coach does the following which unlocks your organization's culture & strategy for innovation and hyper-growth:

1. Alignment of executive teams & product teams to enable empowered and inspired teams.
2. The improved retention rate of product teams - product managers, designers, and engineers.
3. Determining baseline costs and reducing customer acquisition costs through the implementation of modern product management strategies and practices.
4. The increased lifetime value of customers through execution of product delivery frameworks.
5. Reduction in constant firefighting by making your organization balance from strategic to tactical.
6. Avoidance of high sunk costs from quality issues to missed delivery dates to features that add no value and return on investment.
7. Products being monetized and finding their product market fit.
8. Increase in customer retention and NPS.

What are the signs we need a product coach in our organization?

We have found the below to be common across industries and size of organizations from start ups to scale ups to enterprises.

• There is a lack of alignment at the executive and departmental level which results in poor product delivery and poor customer experiences.
• A culture of mistrust and low employee morale.
• Your teams are focusing on solutions 95% of the time and 5% on the discovery of the problems.
• Your team is part of a delivery factory releasing features with little to no value.
• Your organization and team suffer from the ability to deliver value fast and pivot.
• All ideas in your organization go straight into the delivery backlog without any sort of problem validation, strategy, prioritization, or decisions making frameworks.
• There is no product vision & strategy in the product teams.
• The organization has the role of a product owner instead of a product manager.
• Roadmaps are GANNTS instead of product roadmaps and release plans.
• Everything is output focused instead of outcome focused.

How Do Product Owners Contribute to the Product Vision? They Don’t.

In this article, KJ Sethna shares his perspective on product owners and their contribution to the product vision.

airfocus, GmbH

I need senior product managers.

Click on the button below and email me, and I will help connect you with a qualified senior product management team to help go along with your transformation plans.