ZeroBlockers is a framework that helps companies maintain the efficiency of small teams as they grow. It organizes teams into Stream, Product, Internal Product, Enabling, and Ecosystem Teams, each with specific roles. The system focuses on improving processes and developing products efficiently by aligning team functions with product types and scales.
Features
Documentation Structure
The ZeroBlockers documentation is structured around different team types such as Stream Teams, Product Teams, Internal Product Teams, Enabling Teams, and Ecosystem Teams. Each section covers specific roles and practices relevant to those teams.
Team of Teams
Explains the concept of different teams like traditional empowered teams (Stream Teams), Product Teams, Internal Product Teams, Enabling Teams, and Ecosystem Teams. It describes their roles in building and supporting product development.
Principles
The core principles upon which the ZeroBlockers framework is built, guiding the approach to product development.
Structure
Guidelines on structuring cross-functional teams to enable scaling without losing economies of scale.
Funding
Strategies to direct funding towards areas that align best with business and product strategy.
Alignment
Ensures that teams build features that align with the business and product strategy.
Development Process
Helps Stream Teams identify the best features to create and develop them iteratively.
Governance
Provides a framework to track and hold teams accountable for achieving tasked outcomes.
Scaling
How to maintain economies of scale as cross-functional structures grow.
Aligning
Defining the core objectives of the Stream Team based on the product context to ensure alignment across the team.
Continuous Research
Uncovering customer challenges and pain points, and distilling insights into opportunities to enhance product offerings.
Continuous Design
Focusing on ideating solutions, defining experiments, delivering prototypes, and evaluating potential solutions for product development.
Continuous Delivery
Implementing practices and techniques to ensure high-quality code is delivered to customers safely and quickly.
Continuous Improvement
Analyzing processes and identifying areas for improvement to enhance overall team efficiency and product quality.
Shared Values
Defining the core values and principles that enable decentralized decision making.
Structure
Designing the scope, success metrics, and structure of the aligned Stream Teams who will create the product.
Strategy
Documenting the product vision, strategy, and objectives based on market, business, and customer needs.
Staff
Sourcing, recruiting, and onboarding staff onto the Stream Teams.
Skills
Defining the expectations for people in the roles and coaching and developing people to achieve the high standards.
Style
Building an innovation-focused culture, teams are empowered to make decisions and blockers are removed to enable autonomy.
Systems
Documenting the systems that support the product development process and employee performance.
Aligning
Enabling Teams work by aligning with the Ecosystem Teams to ensure that their focus is on the highest priority and measurable areas of impact.
People
Defining expectations for people in their roles and coaching or developing them to achieve high standards.
Process
Creating and maintaining good practice guidelines, playbooks, and templates to accelerate the work of the Stream Teams.
Technology
Assessing tools used by Stream Teams and making recommendations on which tools to use.
Internal Team Types
The page describes two types of internal teams: Traditional Departments, which provide services to Stream teams (e.g., Finance, Legal, HR), and Platform Teams, which develop and maintain products used by multiple Stream teams (e.g., Platform, Design System, Data Analysis & Reporting System).
Incentivising Productisation
The page discusses introducing competition and accountability into internal departments to deliver the best service to Stream Teams. It mentions Internal Competition (having multiple suppliers for each service) and External Competition (setting internal teams as standalone companies that compete externally).
Shared Values
Focuses on values and principles that support decentralized decision-making.
Structure
Involves funding Product, Internal Product, and Enabling Teams for delivering the ecosystem strategy.
Strategy
Documents the ecosystem vision, strategy, and business objectives based on the market, business, and customer needs.
Staff
Sourcing, recruiting, and onboarding staff onto Product Teams.
Skills
Defines expectations for people in their roles and develops the skills needed to achieve high standards.
Style
Builds an innovation-focused culture where teams have the autonomy to make decisions.
Systems
Documents the systems that support product development processes and employee performance.
Functional versus Cross-functional Teams
Explains the difference between functional teams, which handle specific tasks effectively, and cross-functional teams, which manage ambiguous or complex tasks better.
Scaling Cross-functional Teams
Describes how to split large teams into smaller, independent units to prevent communication overhead and improve efficiency.
Example Value Streams
Illustrates how example value streams like Buyers and Sellers can be structured in an e-commerce platform, showing the process from inspiration to retention.
Stream Team Members
Details the roles within stream teams, such as researchers, designers, and developers, and their responsibilities in enhancing value streams.
Aligning
Ensures alignment with product direction and strategy across Stream Teams. The Product Team provides direction, while Stream Teams offer transparency on current work.
Continuous Research
Teams perform research to discover current pain points and unmet needs of customers, uncovering opportunities for product development.
Continuous Design
Teams generate solutions, test assumptions via experiments, and validate through customer feedback, iterating until a strong solution is confirmed.
Continuous Delivery
Solutions are broken into smaller parts for iterative release, enhancing adaptability and customer feedback incorporation, avoiding overengineering.
Continuous Improvement
The Stream Team continuously improves processes by leveraging customer feedback and iterative development, ensuring validated benefits and implemented enhancements.
Business Metrics
This feature ensures that product features deliver top-level business goals, like optimal revenue and cost metrics, by breaking down business goals into specific strategies and objectives.
Translating Business Metrics to Product Metrics
Transforms business goals into tangible product metrics for Stream Teams to achieve, ensuring product features align with the goals.
Product Vision
Defines the company's perception of the product 5 years into the future, focusing on user experience and product-market fit, serving as an inspiration for innovation.
Product Strategy
Details how to achieve the product vision, focused on the next 1-3 years, including target markets, product differentiation, and business model.
Annual Plan
Focuses on key activities for the next 12 months, ensuring teams work on the right areas to advance the strategy, helping align targets and funding.
Aligning on How to Work
Outlines the framework for team collaboration, ensuring effective alignment and use of ZeroBlockers framework for successful outcomes.
Stream Team Scope
This feature involves identifying value streams associated with a product to ensure funding alignment. It focuses on strategic allocation of resources to maximize return on investment.
Stream Team Metrics
Teams are tasked with setting clear success criteria using product metrics. This enables better product governance and ensures strategy alignment.
Stream Team Funding
Funding is allocated based on scope and metrics, ensuring teams aligned with product strategy receive appropriate resources for enhanced investigation and solution delivery.
Example Team Funding
Demonstrates how teams can be aligned with the product strategy through a detailed table allocating team size and funding to various stream teams.
Stream Kanban Board
Combines multiple Stream Boards into one to provide a holistic view of team activities, enhancing visibility for the Product Team.
Weekly Stream Review
Assesses the performance of Stream Teams by reviewing trends and metrics, helping the Product Team identify potential issues.
Weekly Business Review
Allows the Ecosystem Team to assess the overall product performance, focusing on trends and metrics similar to the Stream Review but on a higher level.
Process Improvement
Uses the Theory of Constraints to identify bottlenecks in work processes and enables the prioritization of improvements.
Task Improvement
Focuses on enhancing individual skills within Stream Teams and identifying best solutions for their needs.
Internal Product Teams
These teams focus on specific business-oriented tasks rather than shared infrastructure. They handle responsibilities like the platform (infrastructure, security, data), design systems (UI components and guidelines), finance (budgeting, forecasting), and legal (contracts, compliance).
Enabling Teams
These teams address the challenges of distributed expertise within the organization by developing tools and sharing knowledge. Functional teams include ProductOps, ResearchOps, DesignOps, and DevEx, which enhance skills and resources.
Ecosystem Teams
These teams set the vision and strategy for the entire business unit, ensuring alignment and collaboration between different teams. They oversee the work of product, internal product, and enabling teams to maintain organizational goals.
Metrics for Improved Product Outcomes
ZeroBlockers provides various metrics to help evaluate and track product outcomes across different formats like SaaS, traditional software, physical products, e-commerce products, and mobile apps. These metrics include revenue metrics (MRR, sales revenue, etc.), customer satisfaction metrics (CSAT, ratings and reviews), usage metrics (active users, usage rate), quality metrics (bug resolution time, product load time), financial performance metrics (CAC, inventory turnover rate), market reach metrics (feature utilization rate, user growth rate), feedback metrics (NPS), and cost metrics (Cost of Goods Sold, development cost).
Capability Improvement
The enhancement of skills and knowledge in individuals.
Job Satisfaction
The level of satisfaction individuals feel towards their job roles.
Retention Rate
The percentage of employees who remain with the company over a specified period.
Evaluation Time
The time it takes from prioritizing an opportunity until there is a validated solution, or the opportunity is deprioritized.
Lead Time to First Release
The time it takes to move from a validated solution to production. This is not necessarily your finished feature but the first version that you are using to get further feedback from customers.
Lead Time to Satisfied Customer
The time it takes to move from a validated solution to satisfied customer. This is the point that you are happy with the solution and are ready to move to the next opportunity.
Release Frequency
How often new features are released to customers. This should be individual releases and not gamed by counting multiple different teams inputting into a single larger release as multiple releases.
Change Failure Rate
How often a change results in a failure in production. However, you want to ensure that you do not discourage teams to make changes. Some companies do not count a failure if the team recovers within 5 minutes.
Mean Time to Recovery
The average amount of time it takes to recover from a failure in production. This is the time from when the failure is introduced until the system is back to normal.