{"id":25974,"date":"2021-06-02T16:25:16","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T15:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/?p=25974"},"modified":"2021-06-02T17:15:17","modified_gmt":"2021-06-02T16:15:17","slug":"team-alignment-framework","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/team-alignment-framework\/","title":{"rendered":"Tackling the problem: A simple three-part framework to align your team\u2019s efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At Intercom, we start with the problem. But not every problem is created equal, and their solutions shouldn\u2019t be either.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Aligning on three things before diving into a solution can help ensure teams spend the right amount of time and energy solving every problem. We <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/how-to-write-problem-statements\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">start every project with a problem statement<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that answers these questions:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What outcome does the customer want?\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why do they want it?\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What problems currently exist that prevent them from achieving it?\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A well-crafted problem statement ensures the team shares an understanding of the core problem your customers are facing. But not every problem is equally important. Some problems need a straightforward solution, while others require more innovation. Some solutions are resource-heavy undertakings, while others can be achieved more minimally. Some are incredibly urgent \u2013 others aren\u2019t.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The steps you take \u2013 and the amount of time you spend on each one \u2013 should vary from problem to problem depending on these factors. By failing to acknowledge the differences early, teams risk misallocating their focus and energy when solving problems, investing too much or too little in each one.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"pullquote-style-one\"><p>\u201c<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It ensures we\u2019re focusing on the right areas with the right resources, and it\u2019s the lever that moves the team from the problem space to the solution space<\/span>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To avoid this outcome, we apply a simple three-part framework before we start exploring solutions. By accounting for these differences at the beginning of each project, we can align on how to approach the solution. It ensures we\u2019re focusing on the right areas with the right resources, and it\u2019s the lever that moves the team from the problem space to the solution space.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"our-simple-team-alignment-framework\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our simple team alignment framework\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our team aligns on three points:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Innovation\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Investment\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Urgency<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We rank each point as \u201clow\u201d, \u201cmedium\u201d, or \u201chigh\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-25982 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Team-alignment-framework-table-1-1-700x279.png\" alt=\"Team alignment framework table 1\" width=\"700\" height=\"279\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Team-alignment-framework-table-1-1-700x279.png 700w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Team-alignment-framework-table-1-1-300x120.png 300w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Team-alignment-framework-table-1-1-768x306.png 768w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Team-alignment-framework-table-1-1-600x239.png 600w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Team-alignment-framework-table-1-1.png 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This communicates the team\u2019s initial thoughts on which steps should be taken and how much effort each step should involve. Here\u2019s a breakdown of each part.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"innovation\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Innovation <\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Is this solution something we want to innovate on and own as an industry leader and differentiator, or is it table stakes where we want to be on par with the market?<\/p>\n<h3>How to rank<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our SVP of Product, Paul Adams, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/thoughts-on-innovation\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">describes innovation<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as building something new, different, and better. This type of innovation can factor into the business strategy, product strategy, and execution levels. Before we start a project, we usually consider potential innovation within the latter two categories \u2013 product strategy and execution. <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>At the product strategy level, does this project sit within a product area that requires an innovative solution?<\/li>\n<li>At the execution level, does this project contribute directly to differentiation or closing product gaps?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Understanding where a project sits within the product strategy should help steer the ranking. If the problem is directly tied to your product\u2019s differentiation, innovation should be higher. The team should spend more time thinking big, evaluating multiple directions, and iterating before committing to a solution.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"pullquote-style-one\"><p>\u201cIf the sole goal of the project is to close product gaps, innovation should be low\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If the sole goal of the project is to close product gaps, innovation should be low. The team should evaluate any existing solutions that can be repurposed quickly instead of spending lots of effort devising new approaches.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are projects that sit in the middle as well. My team recently took ownership of our Customer Support channel strategy. Building this strategy was a medium-innovation project because we needed to take time to evaluate how Intercom should evolve to become an omnichannel support tool \u2013 without reinventing the wheel. We spent two to three weeks outlining our vision for solving the core jobs we had identified, but time-boxed ourselves and avoided evaluating every job listed in the problem statement.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"investment\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Investment<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Do we intend to spend a lot of time on this project and potentially enlist resources beyond our teams? Or is it something we want to solve rapidly at low cost?<\/p>\n<h3>How to rank<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Can your team solve this alone? If not, investment will be higher.<\/span><\/li>\n<li>How will you prioritize against other problems?<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Would you spend more time solving this problem than others?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When ranking investment, ensure your team has a practical understanding of what it will take to complete a project. Projects that require a lot of engineering effort, especially if contributions from multiple teams are needed, will automatically rank higher in the investment category.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That said, ranking investment shouldn\u2019t be driven purely by estimating effort. The relative importance of a project should be considered as well. If two projects demand equal effort, but one is critical to achieving a customer outcome, it should be given a higher investment ranking than the other. The team should feel comfortable spending more time on the critical project to ensure they get it right.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"urgency\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Urgency<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Is this time-sensitive? Is it something we want to get to the market as quickly as possible, or do we have the luxury of spending a lot of time here?<\/p>\n<h3>How to rank<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Is this critical to the company and product strategy? Is solving this problem now strategically important?<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is it part of a broader launch? If so, how critical is it to that launch?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Does this problem have a major impact on how customers use and enjoy the product? Does it block a significant portion of customers, or is it something that customers can live with for now?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Urgency can have both top-down and bottom-up inputs. Product and launch strategies can dictate a problem&#8217;s urgency from the top down. If your strategy demands a compelling solution in one core area, the urgency to build that solution will be higher.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From the bottom-up perspective, customer impact can be a strong signal of urgency. If a problem has a major impact on how a significant portion of customers use and enjoy the product, solving it should be more urgent. Signals here could include blocked sales deals, NPS and customer feedback, or churn.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"pullquote-style-one\"><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cCustomer impact can be a strong signal of urgency<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s easy to feel like every project on the roadmap should be at least medium or high urgency, but that\u2019s not always true. Urgency should ultimately indicate how quickly we believe we should get a solution into customers&#8217; hands. A project could be strategically important but have an existing solution that satisfies customers. If customers could continue to be happy with the existing solution, the project&#8217;s urgency might be low despite its strategic importance.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"consider-all-three-elements-together-to-align-on-the-projects-focus\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Consider all three elements together to align on the project\u2019s focus<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The confluence of these three elements will dictate what steps your team should prioritize for the project, and roughly how long they should spend on each.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-25981 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Team-alignment-framework-table-2-700x280.png\" alt=\"Team alignment framework table 2\" width=\"700\" height=\"280\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Team-alignment-framework-table-2-700x280.png 700w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Team-alignment-framework-table-2-300x120.png 300w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Team-alignment-framework-table-2-768x307.png 768w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Team-alignment-framework-table-2-600x240.png 600w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Team-alignment-framework-table-2.png 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If a problem ranks high on urgency and low on innovation and investment, speed is the priority. We\u2019re not going to spend weeks thinking about how we can differentiate ourselves, this is about quickly achieving a successful customer outcome.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If the task ranks high on innovation and low on urgency, we\u2019re going to take the time to look at the big picture and explore multiple different solutions. Here are examples of a couple of different combinations.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Example 1: Inbox 2<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A forthcoming feature we\u2019re working on is the Inbox 2 initiative, which will substantially change the way the Inbox looks and feels for the user. Our inbox is the most frequently used part of our product and is critical to our strategy. Changing it is no small task, but is something we\u2019re keen to do to future-proof it. Here\u2019s how the project looks:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-25984 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/team-alignment-framework-example-1-700x280.jpg\" alt=\"team alignment framework example 2\" width=\"700\" height=\"280\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/team-alignment-framework-example-1-700x280.jpg 700w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/team-alignment-framework-example-1-300x120.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/team-alignment-framework-example-1-768x307.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/team-alignment-framework-example-1-600x240.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/team-alignment-framework-example-1.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Project priority:<\/strong> Thinking big<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Teams contributing:<\/strong> Multiple<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Time spent:<\/strong> One to two quarters<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Approach:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We\u2019ve committed to spend time thinking big, developing a concept car or &#8220;North star&#8221; design. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We\u2019ll also need to source inputs from many teams; research, analytics, sales, customer support, additional product teams, and more.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Example 2: WhatsApp integration<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the challenges of integrating Intercom\u2019s product with WhatsApp is enabling conversations that start in Intercom\u2019s Messenger to continue in Whatsapp. This requires input from several teams \u2013 including security \u2013 and solves a critical problem for customers. Here\u2019s how we ranked it:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-25986 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/team-alignment-framework-example-2-700x279.png\" alt=\"team alignment framework example 2\" width=\"700\" height=\"279\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/team-alignment-framework-example-2-700x279.png 700w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/team-alignment-framework-example-2-300x120.png 300w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/team-alignment-framework-example-2-768x306.png 768w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/team-alignment-framework-example-2-600x239.png 600w, https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/team-alignment-framework-example-2.png 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Project priority:<\/strong> Speed\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Teams contributing:<\/strong> One to two<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Time spent:<\/strong> One quarter or less<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Approach:<\/strong> Speed is king here, so it\u2019s worth considering obvious paths and utilizing existing patterns. Investment is medium because we need contributions from other teams, but because of the high urgency, we will source only critical inputs.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"align-your-team-and-stakeholders-early-to-maximize-success\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Align your team and stakeholders early to maximize success\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This framework is a useful tool for defining and communicating your team\u2019s approach to a project. Agreeing on these factors early means that everyone \u2013 both the immediate team and relevant stakeholders \u2013 understands the shape of the solution, and the steps and feedback expected during the project.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in how we work at Intercom, <a href=\"http:\/\/intercom.com\/careers\">we&#8217;d love to talk to you<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At Intercom, we start with the problem. But not every problem is created equal, and solutions shouldn\u2019t be either. Aligning on three things before diving into a solution can help ensure teams spend the right amount of time and energy solving every problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":482,"featured_media":25977,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"category":[5],"tags":[161,62,363,146],"coauthors":[24927],"class_list":["post-25974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-product-and-design","tag-product-development","tag-product-management","tag-product-strategy","tag-recruitment"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.3 (Yoast SEO v27.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Tackling the problem: A three-part framework to ensure team alignment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Not every problem is created equal, and neither are solutions. 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