For two years in a row, the importance of onboarding product team members efficiently has emerged as a key theme in the regression analysis derived from our annual Study of Product Team Performance. Effectively onboarding talent is highly correlated to high performance on the product team.
Seventy five percent of responding organizations underestimate the importance of establishing streamlined processes that enable product team members to quickly become contributing members to the product team’s success. The data show that only 4% of organizations onboard product team members well enough to claim best practice. In fact, while most organizations have a process in place to onboard new employees to the organization, they fail to implement the same amount of rigor when onboarding employees or contractors to the product team.
The traditional “sink or swim” mentality clearly shows its limitations in terms of decreased team productivity. As the new product team member comes up to speed, momentum stalls for a time and others are pulled away from their tasks to fill in as a way to try to maintain forward momentum – albeit at a slower rate.
High-performing product teams indicate that they place emphasis on onboarding team members to mitigate these risks and to ensure that only a minimum of momentum is lost by having well thought out processes in place as new members join the team.
Is your organization part of the 4%? If not, you are probably not getting the most value from your new product team members!
Greg Geracie is a recognized thought leader in the field of product management and the President of Actuation Consulting, a global provider of product management consulting, training, and advisory services to some of the world’s most well-known organizations. Greg is also the author of the global best seller Take Charge Product Management. He is also an adjunct professor at DePaul University’s College of Computing and Digital Media where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on high-tech and digital product management.