The

Product
Excellence
Maturity
Model
A guide to building customer-centric products
 Table of CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

The five levels of the Product

Excellence maturity model
9

CHAPTER TWO

Three steps to achieve Product

Excellence maturity

22

CONCLUSION

Build excellent products by

leveling up your team
 Excellent As the pace of the market accelerates and

products— customer expectations evolve, it has never been

products more important for companies to build excellent

that people products and get them to market faster.

truly use
But what exactly is an excellent product?
and love—
are those Excellent products—products that people truly
that solve use and love—are those that solve real
real problems and cater to the needs of users.
problems
and cater to The product teams behind excellent products

the needs of do things differently, and what we’ve discovered

users. is that they all share three pillars of mastery:

Deep user insight

Clear product strategy
Inspiring roadmap

4
We’ve coined these pillars
the Product Excellence
methodology

5
“ Simply knowing what
these three pillars are
isn’t enough

GREA
DELIVE
There must be a culture and processes in place
that give product teams the room to put the
methodology into practice. And Product
Excellence isn’t a one-and-done achievement, it
is an ongoing process—one that organizations
must persist in to continuously deliver great
products that customers need.”

ONGOING Hubert Palan

Founder & CEO of productboard

6
 The Product Excellence Maturity Model is a
framework that helps product teams develop
the foundations they need to build excellent,
customer-centric products. The model codifies
effective product management processes,
helping to identify where an organization falls
along the three pillars of Product Excellence
along with next steps for improvement.

There are five levels of

Product Excellence maturity
Level 1 represents inexperienced product
organizations, and Level 5, the mastery of
Product Excellence. As teams progress through
each level, their products become more
sophisticated and increasingly align with the
underlying needs of users.

The 5 levels of maturity are independent of the

age or size of the organization. Though it’s
unlikely a startup could achieve the highest
stages, it’s not impossible. And there are more
than a few enterprises that may find themselves
performing at the lowest stages.

7
8
CHAPTER ONE

The five
levels of the
Product
Excellence
Maturity
Model

9
LEVEL ONE

Intuition-
driven
As the co-founder of a three-year-old SaaS company, Sarah often
wears the hat of a product manager. Her company has seen
moderate success, and they're edging their way towards
profitability but can't quite make it over their current revenue
plateau. Sarah is excited to move forward with a new product idea
that she is sure will wow the market. Unfortunately, there is
considerable disagreement amongst the founding team & the
product team on what to build next.

Sarah pushes forward and starts delegating work to developers. At

first, she receives pushback because they don't understand the
significance of her requests. After eventually getting to work, they
stop halfway through to address unexpected feature requests from
the company's largest customers. Without a unifying strategy or
vision, everyone is in pure execution mode without understanding
why major product decisions are made.

10
“
A lot of At Level 1, product managers dream of

organizations innovation but fail to seek enough input

skip user from the market, resulting in products that

research, don't reflect the needs of users. In the rare

testing, and cases where teams do find product/

validation and market fit, it is often blind luck that they

get right into must work to sustain.

solutions and At this stage, there is no formalized

what they product vision, product strategy, or
want to build. prioritization frameworks. Without a North
The result is a Star, it's easy to get sucked into short-term
struggle to thinking and quick wins that don't move
find a the company forward.
meaningful
market that As product decisions are made on the

will use and whims of founders or product leaders

pay for the without any context or shared

product.” documentation, product managers spend

extra time setting and resetting

expectations for cross-functional teams.

To put it plainly, no one understands the

"why" behind major product decisions.

In Level 2, product teams begin to build

Rich Mironov,
elementary processes to understand
product
users and make small efforts to align the
consultant &
company.
thought leader

11
LEVEL TWO

Introducing
process

Sarah and her team are starting to have conversations with

customers and prospects about the product. She jots down their
ad-hoc requests and creates requirements for them, but they are
more or less a recap of the conversations at face value. In each of
these conversations, Sarah does a lot of the talking—it is clear that
she is trying to contain her excitement about the new product
direction she has in mind. Most of these conversations are one-on-
one and undocumented, so everything is filtered through Sarah's
experience alone.

12
 Level 2 product organizations understand that they
“Only about
need to interface with users. They have basic
10% of
processes for talking to customers and recording
institutional
feature requests, but still analyze inputs at face
knowledge
value rather than digging deeper into underlying
[about the
needs.
product] makes
it to a
Additionally, due to a lack of a formal system to centralized
gather and synthesize product feedback from place. 90%
diverse sources, there is no real collaboration stays in email,
between the product team and customer-facing Slack, in
teams, resulting in valuable insights slipping through people’s
the cracks. Because the product team works in a personal notes,
silo, there is a fundamental disconnect between in people’s
product objectives, overall company strategy, and heads, or on
the broader organization. And, while there may be the whiteboard.
some effort to prioritize features, frameworks usually This is a huge
don't go beyond quantifying value vs. effort. missed
opportunity.
Lack of clear objectives is apparent in the roadmap.

Long-term goals are private or undocumented,

leaving much of the organization unaccountable for

their contributions to the product. Necessary

dependencies are missed, launches are delayed,

and product leadership does not have access to

information on why the product team is heading in Sachin Rekhi,

Founder & CEO
one direction instead of another.

13
LEVEL THREE

Listening to
customers

Sarah spends her time thinking more about the underlying needs
behind what customers tell her in interviews and begins to
document everything in the company's internal wiki. Sarah's also
invested in training her colleagues, helping them understand how
to dig deeper into the issues that customers face. Her product
team has a clear direction and defined KPIs to hold themselves
accountable for moving the product forward. That said, they are
still having a hard time translating insights into a coherent product
vision and strategy.

14
 While product managers start talking to users at Level 2, Level 3 is

where they begin to listen. Level 3 product organizations capture

feedback from diverse touchpoints like email, support tickets,

and user research, and work to uncover real-world pain points

and needs. These insights then inform product vision & strategy.

“Get into Now, PMs are learning how to ask the right probing questions,

that curious, and are beginning to document and pass on necessary context

diagnostic to relevant stakeholders. They approach customer conversations

mindset and with enough patience to ask why. Instead of rushing through

away from conversations, biasing users with leading questions, and skipping

those over the uncomfortable silences that users need to consider

transactional more profound topics, PMs sit back and listen.

or Still, there is a potential for decision paralysis due to

confirmatory information overload. Product managers don't yet understand
ones.” how to systematically comb through the vast quantity of

available data and prioritize their work around broad themes

and objectives. While objectives at Level 3 are customer-

centric, they lack the refinement of an experienced product

researcher. More importantly, there is no segmentation present,

making it difficult to target different use cases & specific users.

At this stage, teams have clear and achievable KPIs to

C. Todd Lombardo
VP of Product measure progress. And, whether it's in the form of a shared

release plan or a roadmap, the product development process

is transparent to everyone. That said, the roadmap still focuses

on outputs rather than outcomes, which leads to a lack of

context around how product work impacts the bottom line.

15
LEVEL FOUR

Aligned on
user needs

Sarah and her team are 100% in alignment with their customers'
needs. Everyone works together to gather deep user insights,
cross-reference new product ideas against a wealth of customer
data, and update the vision and strategy according to findings. And
the team is all moving forward together. When asked about their
direction, everyone can clearly articulate why certain features are
prioritized over others and how each step of the journey builds
towards their long-term product and business goals.

16
“
Great product At this point, product teams have a deep

managers—the understanding of customers & a clearly

ones who put documented product vision and strategy. Every

entire businesses product decision is tracked against a defined set

on a different of goals and backed up with robust customer

trajectory—go research.

beyond merely
At Level 4, each member of the product team has
translating user
the experience and training they need to conduct
insights into
valuable product discovery and user interviews.
product
The team is empowered to ask better questions,
requirements.
and there are rigorous processes in place to
They treat them as
validate potential solutions. All features going into
critical inputs,
production are prioritized based on real needs
applying their
and aligned top-down as well as bottom-up.
deep expertise
Everyone on the product team holds themselves
around the
accountable for their role in the product.
market, the trends,
the technology, Product objectives tie to broader business
and their team’s outcomes and goals, and the entire product team
unique strengths moves collectively towards the company North
to form a clear Star. For the first time, product roadmaps
product vision and simultaneously communicate why some ideas
strategy for how to are prioritized over others. All this is codified in a
get there.” living document—one that shifts and evolves with

changing customer and business needs.

John Cutler
Head of Product Maturing to a Level 5 product organization is
Research & Education about sharing this context so every single person

in the company is on the same page.

17
LEVEL FIVE

A thriving
product
culture

Sarah and her team regularly meet with cross-functional teams to

discuss important product decisions. They are transparent about
the product’s direction and share the roadmap with the entire
organization. Sarah is confident about the company's trajectory
and can see how the product makes a real-world impact on
customers and business goals. All this comes together to create an
exceptional product experience for everyone involved, both in-
and outside the organization.

18
“ The best product
teams and
organizations operate
with a high degree of
unity and cohesion

Everyone shares deep user insights, knowledge

ACHIEV

”
of product strategy, and alignment around
execution. Only then do you see teams achieving
Level 5 of Product Excellence maturity.

UNITY Hubert Palan

Founder & CEO of productboard

19
 Level 5 is the pinnacle of Product
Here’s what this
Excellence maturity, and companies at this
looks like in
stage have achieved a deep understanding
practice:
of customer needs. This makes it easy for

the team to execute on individual tasks

Sales and marketing teams
autonomously & moves the entire
aren't just selling anymore—now
organization toward the North Star vision.
they have an ear to the market.

The customer is now and What's happening in the

always will be the core of industry? What are competitors

every single conversation. doing? What is the product's

main differentiator (& what isn’t)?

At Level 5, product teams have built a

scalable culture around gathering insights The customer success team

across the company. Everyone—not just is no longer just preventing

the product team—are stakeholders in the customers from churning or

product and understands their role in the encouraging them to renew; they

product development process. All team are actively trying to understand

members share product ownership and the gap between customer needs

can provide valuable insight on an and the product's capabilities,

individual level, pulling in the requisite clarifying where the product falls

data and context to inform decisions. short for the product team.

Insight from customer interviews and data

The support team
underlies every conversation about the
is no longer being reactive to
product. Finally, the entire organization
customer issues. Instead, they are
understands the “why” behind the product
listening for usability pains to
roadmap and rallies around it. Even better,
share with the product team.
they keep themselves accountable for

staying updated.

20
“ Great product teams
have empathy and a
deep understanding of
what customers want.

DEE
SaaS helps bring companies closer to their customers
because if you fail to deliver, it’s very easy for a customer to
churn. To deliver Product Excellence as a product
organization, you need to develop empathy at scale. This is
why it is mission critical for product teams to pull data and
insights from a wide range of sources and applications,
including sales, support, success and surveys, not to mention
internal teammates. Your product team can synthesize these
inputs to ensure they have the pulse of the market.”

Bella Renney
Head of Product

21
CHAPTER TWO

Three steps
to achieve
Product
Excellence
maturity
Reaching Level 5 of Product Excellence maturity requires an
authentic curiosity about your users, strategic focus,
transparent communication, and buy-in from your team—
and that only grows over time.

Below, we’ve outlined three steps that product organizations

can take to become more customer-driven, and, as a result,
consistently build products that are used and loved.

22
“ Visitor expectations
are constantly
increasing

VISITO
They covet lightning-fast speed, brilliant design,
and proactive support. Winning digital companies
have to adapt an ongoing, user-focused mindset
in order to build excellent products and deliver a
high-quality user experience...anything less is
leaving money on the floor.”

SPEED
DESIGN Scott Voigt
CEO

23
STEP ONE

Establish a process for

collecting deep user insights
In the top customer-driven product organizations, everyone has a
shared understanding of what users really need. This allows them
to excel in their work—whether that's prioritizing, designing,
developing, promoting, supporting, or selling. After all, product
touches every team, and everyone benefits when it is excellent.

“Unlocking meaningful and actionable user

insights that drive great experiences begins with
building empathy for those using your product
Teams do this by continuously engaging with users throughout the
product development lifecycle, from ideation and discovery
through delivery and optimization. The result is an organization-
wide product culture, driven by customer empathy, that ships
products that deliver value and outcomes.”

Janelle Estes
Chief Insights Officer

24
Here’s how product teams can start
gathering and leveraging deep user insights
Audit all existing user and product inputs. Consider all the different

touchpoints that people have with end-users, like support tickets,

emails, win/loss analyses, and more. From there, organize inputs

according to user segments, specific features, and other categories,

and begin to identify trends and patterns.

Regularly interface with customer-facing teams. Sales, support, and

success teams speak with customers every day. Set up processes to

access the treasure trove of insights they have to offer.

Make it a habit to talk to customers. Intentionally set aside time to

speak to a wide range of users via interviews, sit in on sales calls, and

nurture power users of the product.

Set up a system to consolidate product inputs from all sources.

A central repository allows product teams (and everyone else) to have

continuous access to fresh insights and easily track and make sense of

different feedback types.

Experiment and act on insights. Use frameworks to understand the

“why” behind customer insights and use that knowledge to inform the

product vision, strategy, and roadmap.

Learn more:
How to gather and leverage deep user insights: A guide
to becoming a customer-driven organization

25
STEP TWO

Set a clear product strategy

and define objectives
With so many competing priorities and different stakeholders to
please, it’s easy to get stuck in a reactive mindset–putting out one
fire and then the next, impulsively adopting the hottest tech trends,
or going tit for tat with competitors.

That’s why mature product organizations prioritize around clear,

measurable objectives that are aligned with their strategy. Rather
than haphazardly swinging from one feature to the next, they work
on initiatives that unify the entire team’s efforts. Think about it as
breaking a monolithic product up into smaller units that
organizations can tackle one at a time, depending on where their
need is greatest. Many teams set objectives over 6, 8, or 12-week
work cycles. When the cycle is over, they evaluate their success
and decide to either continue pursuing the objective or declare it
complete and move on to the next one.

Objectives may relate to solving the needs of specific types of

users or market segments. Or, they may relate to driving growth,
competitive differentiation, regulatory compliance, security, or any
number of other goals that would help the business succeed in the
mid-to-long-term. In the latter case, they may even directly support
organization-wide OKRs or priorities set by leadership that direct
every team’s efforts.

26
To start, create a living document that
codifies product vision and strategy that
considers the following questions
Where should your organization be in 3-5 years? Base this long-term

strategy on the company’s unique strengths, market trends, and

opportunities for capitalizing on them, all while acknowledging constraints,

weaknesses, and external threats.

What is the organization’s 12-18 month strategy? Where should the

product be in the mid-term and how does the team aim to get there?

What objectives can you pursue in the short-run to advance your mid-

term strategy? Whether the goal is to drive user acquisition or improve

platform reliability, everyone working on the product knows why their work

matters. What objective will you define for your team’s next cycle?

Now, to the “living” part of the living document

Teams must refine and revisit their strategy on a regular basis. Each new

insight or data point surfaced can have direct implications on the kind of

product experience customers expect, so product makers must remain

open-minded and flexible.

Learn more:
Defining objectives and key results for your product team
Why you need a product strategy framework to build a great product

27
STEP THREE

Involve stakeholders in
product development
When the product teams roll out their strategy and roadmap to the
company, the goal is not to inspire shock and surprise. People
need to be bought into the whole process and feel like they’ve
contributed along the way. After all, everyone’s success—from top-
level executives to individual contributors—is tied in one way or
another to the product.

Establishing regular rituals and processes can help the product team
engage stakeholders across the company and ensure that they feel
heard. Additionally, roping in stakeholders unlocks knowledge,
expertise, and insights normally outside of the product team’s
domain. This broadened perspective can lead to better products.

“Developing a clear strategy and keeping

everyone on the same page is critical to product
teams pursuing Product Excellence.
For some teams, doing this in a fully remote mode is a challenge.
Miro ensures that, no matter where or how they work, teams stay
connected in order to collaborate cross-functionally, communicate
the company vision and drive the strategy.”

Anna Boyarkina
Head of Product

28
How to involve stakeholders in product
development
• Establish clear processes for submitting feature ideas, relaying

feedback from users and prospects, and collecting win/loss

analyses.

• Set regular meetings with sales, customer success, support, and

other customer-facing teams to hear their biggest challenges with

the product and where they see the biggest opportunities.

• Schedule regular meetings to share product updates with the

organization. productboard, for example, has a weekly “product

lunch” that the whole company is welcome to join.

• Make it a habit to present the product roadmap at all-hands

meetings.

• Encourage leadership to regularly remind the organization about

business goals, product objectives, and how they support one

another and advance the company toward the vision.

• Celebrate product successes with the entire organization, and be

transparent about learnings when the performance of a product

or feature falls short of expectations.

These rituals will become the core drivers of a mature product team.

And they ensure that lines of communication stay open and flowing at

all times.

29
CONCLUSION

Build excellent
products by
leveling up
your team
Product Excellence is all about creating an environment where
every part of the organization can execute together toward shared
product goals. Once product makers understand where their
company currently stands, they can define the best path forward
when it comes to vision, strategy, and execution.

As teams progress through each stage of maturity, it becomes

easier and easier to build the types of products that serve
customer needs and advance broader company goals.

Ready for your evolution to begin?

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About
productboard
productboard is a customer-driven product management
system that empowers teams to get the right products to
market, faster. It provides a complete solution for product
teams to understand user needs, prioritize what to build
next, align everyone on the roadmap, and engage with their
customers. productboard is easy to use, enables company-
wide collaboration, and integrates into existing workflows.

Learn more at productboard.com