Ignore ‘templates’ and do what works for you, advises Chief Product Officer Matthew Zammit

Matthew Zammit, Founder and Fractional Chief Product Officer (CPO) for Start-ups at Know Your Social, on Monday shared that what may work for a team in one particular situation, might not be best suited for others.

“Best practices in a team are often a function of the skills within the team and the type of product where they are being used,” he said, before explaining that due to this, they “might not translate well to a different situation”.

In order to explain something to a team member, such as how to do something or how to structure a team, a business leader can often give a “template answer”, an answer that aims to resonate across different teams.

However, Mr Zammit said that to really be able to answer such questions, a business leader needs to have a “good understanding of the team, the culture, the maturity, the skills, and the product”.

“There were times when I delegated product work to a UX Designer because they had the overall customer understanding. At other times an Engineer wrote the specs,” he continued.

He emphasised that this is not the best practice, yet they “worked in those particular instances”.

“And that’s how you must look at every decision, particularly around strategy, structure and culture,” Mr Zammit remarked.

To make a proper assessment, business leaders must ask themselves what the inputs and constraints are, what skills the team possesses, the business goals, and how to connect everything together. Mr Zammit explained that business leaders ultimately have to do what works for them.

“Irrelevant of the newer sexy framework, or the latest flavour of how Airbnb structure product teams,” he said, before concluding with “best practices don’t always translate across teams”.

Mr Zammit has more than 15 years of experience in product, marketing, and mentoring, and has helped various teams and start-ups with different aspects related to product. He holds a Master of Science in Informatics and Web Accessibility and a Bachelor of Science in Business and Computing, both from University of Malta, as well as a Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing from the Digital Marketing Institute. He also completed a six-month online digital marketing and future leadership course developed with Google.