Last week, Propel and Ken Sandy teamed up to run Value Stream training with product managers, engineers, business analysts, and QAs. It was a whole lot of fun infused with plenty of learning.
One of the big ideas that weaved through, was how value streams (those cross-functional teams) unlock accountability for outcomes, not just outputs.
If only product managers own the customer problem, or only engineers own delivery, we get stuck in silos. The best results come when the whole cross-functional team feels responsible for solving customer problems and delivering business value.
That means everyone: product managers, engineers, BAs, QAs, needs to understand:
Who the customer is
What problem we’re solving for them
What success looks like in outcomes, not just activity
When every role has that clarity, it changes how people show up to work. Prioritisation decisions become easier, trade-offs make more sense, and most importantly, we stop celebrating “done” and start focusing on whether what we delivered actually made a difference.
One of the most powerful lightbulb moments came when we talked about apples and oranges. Too often, teams treat “launch day” like the end of the marathon, when really it’s just the starting line in the race toward product success.
The activities under the orange look fine in isolation until you level up, shifting to the outcome and customer-centric mindset of the apple.
There were a few nervous laughs when Ken shared the “vanity metrics” slide — oops, we use those a lot! Registered users, downloads, social followers… they feel good in the moment, but they rarely tell us if we’re creating value.
The challenge is moving past vanity metrics and agreeing on the measures that matter: customer adoption, sustained engagement, reduced churn, and business impact.
When we measure what matters, we stop patting ourselves on the back for activity and start holding ourselves accountable for (that word again) outcomes.
Another highlight was the exercise on personas. Day to day, if you're just picking up Jira tickets without any connection to the human being you are solving a problem for, you won't have any real sense if you are focused on the right tasks. Having everyone build out personas and customer journeys introduced empathy and meaning for everyone in the team.
Even the hardcore mainframe engineers valued being able to trace the connection between their work and the customer.
Who are we solving this for? What will success look like for them? Suddenly, it’s not “my story” or “your feature”, it’s our customer problem to solve.
Shared accountability across the whole team isn’t just theory. It’s how the best product teams leverage the best of each other, challenging the what AND the how. When engineers, BAs, QAs, and product managers all feel responsible for the outcome, not just their part of the process we stop chasing “done” and start chasing impact.
That’s the product mindset in action:
Start with the customer problem
Define success as outcomes, not outputs
Measure what really matters
Bring everyone closer to the customer
When teams work this way, the chances of delivering what customers actually want is a lot higher which is ultimately what being in business is about.
You can find check out Ken's book, The Influential Product Manager: here and if you think your team would benefit from a session like this, reach out.