Who is involved in assessing the problems you choose to tackle?

At Atlassian, assessing which problems to tackle is a deeply cross-craft and strategic process. When we propose a new strategy or explore a meaty new problem space, it typically goes through a product review with leadership. These sessions resemble a pitch where the PM and team present a clear articulation of the problem, supported by customer research, market insights, and data analysis, and explain why this is the right problem to solve now. We are often asked questions like, “What would you d ...Read More

tl;dr: The core assessment happens within a small team of product builders but it’s shaped by broader company priorities. What’s changed: Small, high-context teams own the problem.Typically ~3 product builders who can cover product thinking, design, and engineering.Because roles are collapsing, these teams don’t rely on handoffs: they operate with shared context and full ownership. Problem assessment is a team sport.The team is responsible for: Understanding the customer and their pain points Va ...Read More

It is the Product Manager’s job to identify, prioritize and shape the problems the team is tackling. We’ll break this into two parts 1) finding problems 2) shaping problems. Finding Problems You need to have ongoing sources that you’re plugged into to find problems. Common sources are 1) customer research 2) exec requests 3) support tickets or user feedback 4) product usage data. In my experience, I’ve found the most fruitful source of problems and opportunities is customer research. Be careful ...Read More

There is an interesting tension here between looking at problem spaces from a variety of angles to make sure you have a sound and differentiated strategy that is worth pursuing and inciting decision paralysis by having too many individuals involved in the process. And the truth is, it depends on the project. I’ll give you a couple of examples for how we have tried to simplify the investment of time and talent for this particular challenge, but it may not work for all organizations. The approache ...Read More

Product management is accountable and responsible for assessing which problems to tackle. But I strongly believe it works best when it’s a process where everyone can provide input, there’s transparency on how decisions are being made (see question on feature planning), and where decisions are made based on market fact - not opinion. Any debate should be decided by data and market (customer) signal. As a PM, your market intelligence should come from as many sources as possible. Customers, partner ...Read More

The required approach is contingent upon the scope and potential impact of the issue. For minor or more isolated concerns, I typically collaborate directly with my engineering lead and pertinent stakeholders, such as design, sales, and support, to evaluate the problem and ascertain potential solutions.  When addressing larger, cross-functional challenges, a broader group is engaged, which may incorporate other Product Managers, senior leadership, and specialized analytics or research teams. The ...Read More

Let’s break this down into 2 workstreams - 1) how to create the complete opportunity space & 2) the process to select the right opportunities to go after.  Creating the opportunity space - Assessing problems always starts with customers/users. As a PM, always factor time week over week to shadow/talk to your customers. If you have a user researcher on your team, they are your partner to start with. Also, problem identification can come from anywhere in the organization - as a PM, you should ...Read More