John Binay: To Be a Successful Product Leader, Ensure Internal Alignment

In John Binay’s view, you must anticipate obstacles to make sure your product launches successfully. “It’s important to have a clear schedule of milestones,” he says. When you’ve established this schedule, it’s essential to get a strong head start and confirm that tasks are properly prioritized. “Make sure people don’t wait until the last minute to start. For example, sometimes some tasks are not on the critical path, so the people performing those tasks may wait until the last minute to deliver them. They may say, ‘I didn’t work on this because I was working on this other project that was more urgent.’ It’s always a balance between bandwidth and speed,” he says.
For this reason, be sure that there’s internal alignment before you begin. “Aligning on priorities is important, but it can also be difficult if you’re trying to coordinate a product launch across an entire team when those team members have differing priorities. One thing that’s critical for launching a product quickly is making sure everyone’s on the same page at the beginning with respect to product scope and definition,” he advises. “You must also have a clear target audience. The clearer the definition of your target audience and product scope, the faster the product launch will go. If you all focus on what needs to be done, then it will move quickly.”

This is an excerpt from 7 Experts on Product Leadership. The eBook was generously sponsored by Workfront.