Product Managers, Salespeople, and Product Marketers are often frustrated to learn about changes in the product plan that were made without their involvement. Changed dates, reduced or expanded scope, altered technical approach, or maybe even targeting a different market. If this sounds at all familiar, teams need to re-look at their DMF – Decision-Making Framework.
Explaining Decision-Making Frameworks
The basic concept of a DMF is not new. Historically, DMFs were implemented using a RACI table. However, RACIs tended to be big and overly process-driven – too many roles were required for a decision and the process was way too slow. After a few trials, they were quickly abandoned. Here is a much simpler approach that works:
- First, identify the types/categories of decisions that are important enough to be included in a DMF
- Keep the list small – all team decisions don’t need to go through a formal DMF
- Next, only define the Accountable (A) and Responsible (R) roles for each type of decision
- A: There should only be one accountable/driver per decision type
- This role owns getting to a decision in a reasonable time
- This role also owns communicating the impact of the decision to relevant stakeholders
- R: These roles have a valid contribution to the decision
- There are usually multiple R’s per decision type
- A: There should only be one accountable/driver per decision type
- From RACI, we have found that “C” and “I” roles are superfluous
- Competent and trained R’s and A’s should know who to involve, and it may change based on the decision
Here is an example of a more “agile” DMF:
| Accountable | Responsible | |
| New product or feature | Product Manager | Tech Lead/Team Architecture/Design Product Marketing |
| New revenue opportunity that affects the Roadmap | Product Manager | Sales Product Marketing Tech Lead/Team Architect/Design |
| A platform change, such as base architecture, system support, or GUI | Scrum Master/Dev Mgr | Tech Lead/Team Architecture/Design Product Manager |
| Product delivery date change | Scrum Master/Dev Mgr | Product Manager Product Marketing Sales |
| Target market shift | Product Marketing | Product Manager Marketing Communications Sales |
| Packaging or Positioning change | Product Manager or Product Marketing | Product Manager or Product Marketing Tech Lead/Team |
Tools for Decision-Making Frameworks
For DMF-based decisions, team members need to start with a baseline of the current plan to understand the impacts of a decision. This can be achieved with a Positioning Document, Market Strategy Document, Lean Canvas, or Roadmap. ProductStart provides a straightforward way to build and update these baseline documents and is now available with a 30 day free trial. Check it out at www.productstart.io.
