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The checklist you need to give Boards & Product Leaders peace of mind on product growth, compliance and risk.

How to monitor, assess, then re-evaluate your product strategy - and by default report on product growth, compliance and risk while working as a virtual team - in uncertain times.

How to re-evaluate product strategy and risk from anywhere, at anytime?

We have put together a check-list to cover the areas of product growth, compliance, risk and culture so you can achieve peace of mind and best practice in uncertain times.  The check-list helps you consistently monitor a 360-degree view of  your product health and risk status and re-evaluate strategy - across all product portfolios in your organisation - as a virtual or remote team.

In this article, we share three things:

1. A check-list for Board Members to improve lifecycle governance, management of non-financial risk and customer trust in uncertain times
2. A check-list for Chief Product Officers and product leaders to set up effective communication across the organisation to proactively re-evaluate product growth strategy, risk and course correct.
3. How Skyjed provides a product auditing tool that helps you get a 360-degree view of product health - allowing you to quickly course correct product strategy and governance as a simple, effective and collaborative framework.

Why is it important?

Product lifecycle governance sits at the heart of a company's operations. To make the best decisions, leaders need access to real-time insight about their product health - end to-end.  A 360-degree health-check has the potential to prepare Boards and their Chief Product Officer in uncertain times.  The trend is clear, it is beneficial to be ready for various scenarios with more than a list of product risks. Adopting best practice is when the Chief Product Officer is using a product auditing tool to interpret and reset your product strategy and develop action plans to address risks. Doing so will provide confidence to your teams that they have the right context to manage non-financial risk in a product strategy and can quickly set and implement 90-day improvement plans.

In the short term, Boards can take an active role in ensuring product governance in the day-to-day operations of the business and across product design, distribution and post-sales. By doing so, your Board will gain visibility into product portfolio health and peace of mind on compliance, growth and risk. Looking further out, you will build a transparent and collaborative product governance culture.

What is a product strategy audit?

Product auditing for uncertain futures

A Skyjed product audit is a tool to help you create and monitor your product strategy, then make a forward-looking assessment about it. The product audit is used to set your product growth strategy, target market, product experience, relevant regulatory obligations and risk profiles and management reporting.  You can manage your product portfolio health from anywhere, at anytime.

Product check-lists to get things done

The product check-list below is a list of items, requirements, things to be done or points to be considered. The check-list helps you ensure that you don't forget essential steps or angles when things are chaotic and complicated.

There is no perfect check-list, but if you follow these simple and pragmatic points that we have developed on the bedrock of more 25 years experience leading complex product strategy and portfolios, you will save time and keep focused. It also helps you be agile and thorough in re-evaluating product strategy adopting consistent health checks to quickly identify any early signs of risks and course correct to get back on track.

A check-list that Boards should be discussing with their product and risk leaders:

1. Do we have a product governance framework?
2. Is our Chief Product Officer guiding 90-day reviews of growth strategy and non-financial risk? 
3. Do they contain an appropriate focus on cross-functional expert input, supply chain monitoring for each product, short- and long-term non-financial product risk  impact?
4. Is the Product team communicating timely product updates to both internal and external stakeholders on the product strategy story, product experience friction areas and risk mitigation plans?
5. How are we consistently monitoring the ongoing risks across our new and existing product lifecycle to better manage volatility?
6. Are we routinely revisiting and clarifying our strategy drivers as the crisis evolves and the landscape changes - adjusting revenue and product margin forecasts against budget if necessary and resetting product strategy and re-forecasting across pessimistic, stretch and target case?
7. Are we scenario planning and 'pipe-lining' regulatory and external changes in product strategy reviews to assess emerging risks?

A check-list for the Chief Product Officer to proactively address with their product and risk teams:

1. Have you re-evaluated your product strategy in the past 90-days?
2. Have you set up a 'virtual' team as a decision-centre to get expert input on your product strategy and risk profiles?  Getting the right team composition is your starting point - design, user experience,  risk, regulatory, marketing and strategy.
3. Have you researched your market and product experience against a defined target market and highlighted friction points?
4. Are you reviewing and 'pipe-lining' regulatory obligations and external changes in product strategy for a forward looking view of emerging risks?  
5. Are you adjusting revenue forecasts against budget if necessary and resetting product strategy and re-forecasting across pessimistic, stretch and target business cases?
6. Are you setting 90-day action plans for flawless execution, with a target date and accountable team member.
7. Have you embraced a product health-check report so that the front-line leaders can course correct quickly before potential problems become actual ones?

How to quickly implement a virtual and remote product team to address product growth, compliance and risk in 6 simple steps?

What does success look like on day one:

The power of a product health-check is in the ease of use for a Product Owner to set risk profiles and actions, so you know where you are going to deliver growth, manage friction in product experience for compliant products that boost customer trust.

With Skyjed your virtual product team can be up and running in minutes, product strategy is set and frequently monitored, assessed and then re-evaluated in these 6 simple steps:

Step 1:  Create a product portfolio containing products and invite your virtual team
Step 2: The team audits and input product strategy data and is prompted for information in a set of Drivers.
Step 3:  AI analyses the data to create your product insights and overall Health Index
Step 4: Report, export and share your product story, insights and action plans
Step 5:  Collaborate and build a product action plan
Step 6: Monitor the status of your action plan.  Set your audit cadence, weekly monthly and 90 day cycles and repeat the process.

How does Skyjed help you be an expert at leading product growth, compliance and risk in uncertain times?

The Skyjed product lifecycle management and governance platform provides organisations with a 360-degree view of their product portfolios health and risk status while facilitating collaboration, transparency and product trust in the day to day operations of the organisation.

Our award-winning Product 360 Workspace is made up of all the Ai-based tools you need to achieve product excellence as a virtual team. Manage your product portfolio from anywhere, at any time - geographically dispersed or remote teams to work together and rely on Skyjed as the product workplace tool for successful product professionals .