Jeff Paton’s book User Story Mapping talks about design and product management approaches that are the best practices in his experience. I found his discussion of “shared understanding” illuminating; Even within my own team, I sometimes find our “understandings” misaligned with one another. This resulted in simply talking and jotting down notes during team meetings. However, not everyone participates the same amount in these discussions, resulting in some discrepancies in our knowledge. I like his suggestion to draw things out using sticky notes and periodically asking around, “do we all agree with what is on the board?” Externalizing our thoughts is something we can definitely improve upon and will use moving forward.
I also like Jeff’s description of documents as ways to remember our understanding and the ultimate goal is not to create the perfect document, it is to create a shared understanding when looking at the document. Previously in my PM role, I had written up a Product Requirements document for a feature I was shipping. Although I had tried to make it as comprehensive as possible, there were still many misunderstandings among the developers, designers, and even the executive team. This underscores the importance of really talking out the project, asking questions and externalizing our thoughts, and then documenting our agreements. That way, everyone can have a mutual understanding of what is going on. I wonder though, what is the best practice for these conversations, especially for remote teams? I would love to see examples of meetings for brainstorming and solidifying ideas.
