Product Development Playbook - Guide your team

A guide on how to go through the product development process and remain respectful towards all aspects of work and your team.

1. Product Development Playbook From ideation to growth — a pragmatic, outcome-driven operating system Product Development Playbook

2. Ideation First Every suggestion must answer four questions Product Development Playbook

3. The Four Ideation Questions What problem are we solving (and for whom)? What separates this product from similar offerings? What is its unique proposition? Does it create repeatable value in the market? Use these as the intake gate. No idea proceeds without concise answers. Product Development Playbook

4. Agenda Foundations — product vs implementation Portfolio strategy Ideation & continuous discovery Shaping & planning (Smallest Lovable Release) Design & technical architecture Delivery (build) with quality-by-design Validation & release management Go-to-market & commercialization Post-launch growth & lifecycle Support, reliability & operations Roles & RACI, Cadence & rituals Templates & 90-day rollout Product Development Playbook

5. Foundations Product Development Playbook

6. Foundations — Essentials Funding: Product (themes) vs Implementation (SOW) Success: Adoption/Retention vs OTOBIS/CSAT Intake: Opportunity backlog vs Contract scope Cadence: Dual-track & continuous vs Stage-gate Governance: Product Council, Experiments, Architecture vs PMO Product Development Playbook

7. Portfolio Strategy Product Development Playbook

8. Portfolio Strategy — Essentials Vision, 1–3 strategic bets, product themes North Star + guardrails (e.g., churn, infra cost) Capacity allocation (e.g., 60/20/20) Quarterly Stop/Start/Scale, monthly check-ins Product Development Playbook

9. Ideation & Discovery Product Development Playbook

10. Ideation & Discovery — Essentials Opportunity discovery: JTBD interviews, support mining, analytics Problem framing & outcomes; constraints explicit Solution discovery: sketches → prototypes → concierge Evidence: usability ≥ 80%, feasibility spike, viability/pricing signals Product Development Playbook

11. Shaping & Planning Product Development Playbook

12. Shaping & Planning — Essentials Define the Smallest Lovable Release (SLR) Lean PRD: context, outcome, risks, experience, constraints Tech notes, release plan, analytics, support & ops Tracking plan reviewed; Go/No-Go criteria set Product Development Playbook

13. Design & Architecture Product Development Playbook

14. Design & Architecture — Essentials Accessibility (WCAG), states (empty/loading/error), responsive, localization Service boundaries, OpenAPI, data models, caching, observability Non-functionals: p95/p99, rate limits, threat model, DPIA/compliance Quality gates: ADR approvals, security checklist, perf budgets Product Development Playbook

15. Delivery (Build) Product Development Playbook

16. Delivery (Build) — Essentials Trunk‑based dev; CI/CD; static analysis; test strategy Feature flags & progressive delivery; robust code reviews Definitions: DoR & DoD with monitoring & docs Runbooks and kill switches for risky features Product Development Playbook

17. Validation & Release Product Development Playbook

18. Validation & Release — Essentials Alpha (internal), Beta (opt‑in), GA Progressive exposure 1%→5%→25%→100%; guardrails monitored Migrations/backfills/rollbacks rehearsed; on‑call aware Release notes by audience; CS playbooks; status updates Product Development Playbook

19. Go‑to‑Market Product Development Playbook

20. Go‑to‑Market — Essentials Positioning: ICP, value prop, messaging pillars Pricing & packaging: tiers, trials, regional nuance Enablement: battlecards, demos, docs, marketplaces Metrics: activation, trial→paid, CAC payback, attach rate Product Development Playbook

21. Post‑Launch Growth Product Development Playbook

22. Post‑Launch Growth — Essentials Loops: activation, engagement, referral, content/SEO Experiments: onboarding, paywall, copy, pricing (ethics review) Health: cohort retention, DAU/WAU/MAU, p95, error budgets Decision rhythm: weekly/monthly/quarterly Product Development Playbook

23. Support & Reliability Product Development Playbook

24. Support & Reliability — Essentials Support tiers, SLAs/OLAs, escalation, KB Observability: dashboards, SLOs/error budgets, alerts→runbooks Incident management: severity, on‑call, postmortems Data governance: owners, DSAR, retention, audit trails Product Development Playbook

25. Roles & RACI Product Development Playbook

26. Roles & RACI — Essentials PM, Design/Research, Tech Lead, Engineers Data, PMM, QA/Automation, Product Ops RACI: Roadmap (HoP), Architecture (HoE), Experiment ethics (Data Lead) Product Development Playbook

27. Cadence & Rituals Product Development Playbook

28. Cadence & Rituals — Essentials Weekly: discovery, delivery, metrics Bi‑weekly: planning & retro; arch hours Monthly: roadmap; Experiment Review Board Quarterly: Stop/Start/Scale; pricing review Product Development Playbook

29. Templates Product Development Playbook

30. Templates — Essentials Opportunity Canvas, Assumption Map, Experiment Brief Tracking Plan, Release Readiness Checklist Post‑Launch Review (2 weeks after GA) Product Development Playbook

31. 90‑Day Rollout Product Development Playbook

32. 90‑Day Rollout — Essentials Weeks 1–2: Themes, North Star, capacity; Product Council Weeks 3–4: Dual‑track on 2–3 opportunities; templates live Month 2: Release trains + flags; dashboards & SLOs Month 3: GTM formalized; first S/S/S; publish playbook Product Development Playbook

33. Appendix — Intake Gate Product Development Playbook

34. Appendix — Intake Gate — Essentials Problem (who, frequency/severity, evidence) Differentiation (what separates us) Unique proposition (why this, why now) Repeatable value (evidence) Success metric (target & timeframe) Risks & ethics (next tests/mitigations) Product Development Playbook

35. Thank You Build outcomes, not just outputs Product Development Playbook