The Product Team Starter Kit

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The Product Team Starter Kit

The Product Team Starter Kit

Engaging teamwork

Engaging teamwork

Strategic planning

Strategic planning

Project management

Project management

Relevant reading

Relevant reading

The Product Team Starter Kit

Your guide to building a process your team will actually use.

Coda

Last updated: 12/10/2020

Want to build a better pipeline for your product team? This Starter Kit showcases free, time-saving templates focused on helping you ship a better product, faster. And each template is customizable, so you can build tools to keep your team on track, focus your strategic planning, and launch features—in a way that works best for your team.

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Copy this Starter Kit

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Learn more about Coda

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Every product team strives for high performance. And the right tools can help them leverage their strengths and make their goals easier to achieve. But, as you know, choosing that tool is easier said than done.

Your designer likes a newly-launched tool, while your engineer prefers one they’ve been using for years. Or you start a project with a Google doc, which grows to two Google docs, plus a spreadsheet and a Trello board, by the end of the quarter. Out-of-the-box software is designed for one-size-fits-most—and there’s a good chance it won’t be the right fit for your team. But the perfect tool for your team does exist—when you make it yourself. Let your team shape the tool, not the other way around.

We’ve always believed that process is a product in and of itself. And it’s no surprise that the people who build products for a living make incredibly insightful docs, too. Like this look at

how Figma ships product

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from their VP of Product, Yuhki Yamashita. And Dropbox VP of Product Adam Nash’s

product planning

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guide. And Superhuman founder and CEO Rahul Vohra’s interactive framework for finding

product/market fit

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In this Starter Kit, we highlight common patterns for creating a process your product team will actually use—from discussion topic voting to feature roadmapping to bug squashing.

Get the most out of your meetings.

With so much time dedicated to stand-ups, brainstorms, and discussions, every moment demands productivity, concise communication, and clear expectations. What if you worked smarter, not harder?

Every meeting should work to improve team morale and alignment. So why not try designing teamwork like you design your product: with your users in mind. To quote Yuhki, from his doc

An inside look at how Figma ships product

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Just as important as building the doc is having the convention and culture where you look at it regularly.

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Gauge the temperature in the room.

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Interpersonal cues, like body language, can be easy to miss, especially in a digital space. Instead of trying to read the minds of your meeting attendees, simply ask them how they’re feeling—about their day, this specific meeting, or anything else. Add this template to your doc by typing /team sentiment tracker.

Go ahead, tell us how you feel. 👇

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How are you feeling?

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Sentiment

Reflection

Submitted by

Care to explain?

There are no rows in this table

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Move important topics to the top of your discussions.

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Not all meeting topics are created equal, especially when deadlines are approaching and everyone only has this exact half hour to meet. Drive consensus and bring everyone along for the ride with this simple templateーjust hit /voting table and start adding topics. Copying this

meeting poll

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live polling app

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doc would also do the trick!

Add topics and upvote. 👇

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Add topic

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Done

Idea

Author

Vote

Upvotes

Upvoters

How can we implement Coda in Q3?

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Is it possible to save 2 hours a week on our meetings?

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What is the process for launching a customer feedback tracker?

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Will there be any scale issues?

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There are no rows in this table

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Focus your brainstorms.

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Brainstorms can be incredibly inspiring and a great way to connect with your team. Or they can go absolutely nowhere at all. Try setting an agenda and clarifying expectations with this

set of helpful prompts

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👉 Explore other useful drag-and-drop templates:

Engaging teamwork

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. Or if you want a more comprehensive solution, try this

meeting tracker

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Create an intentional product strategy.

Your

product plan

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carries weight, and all eyes are on you team during the decision-making process. What features are you building next? How are you going to build this? Can you match the roadmap to your

OKR tracking

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? According to Adam Nash in his

three-bucket product planning guide

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doc:

Debates tend to get so caught up in the should, that when and how are neglected.

The strategy you choose when answering these questions will impact your team and your product. (No pressure.) You know what your team can reasonably accomplish, so simplify and add visibility to your strategic process where it makes sense.

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Start with a team exercise.

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You have a million and one things on your feature backlog, ranging from community requests to board asks. But what do you work on next? Give all opinions airtime, get aligned, and become one with your priorities with this

team backlog ranking doc

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Communicate decisions as strategy evolves.

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Decisions are made in meetings, over Slack, and, when in the office, in hallways. Give proper visibility to all decisions made with a decision log that sends updates to both Slack and email with the push of a button. Customize this template after adding it to your doc with /decision log.

Question?

Decision

Send to Slack

Slack Channel

Send via Email

What color should we make the logo?

Options were red, green or blue

Decided on green as it was closest to the rest of our branding

Send to Slack

my-team

Send to Email

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team@codadoc.io

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When should we launch?

We reviewed all the options (see the write up for more detail)—launching next Thursday.

Send to Slack

my-team

Send to Email

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team@codadoc.io

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There are no rows in this table

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Add context to retrospectives with Jira.

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Celebrating your team’s wins and discussing what could be better next time empowers your team to improve with every project. Use this

quick start doc

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to include Jira issues in your next retrospective to bring your goals and accomplishments closer together. Or read this doc for more context on running a

sprint retrospective

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👉 Explore other useful drag-and-drop templates:

Strategic planning

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See every project to its end.

When building a feature, you consolidate feedback, sequence work while aligning the team, design and spec, and, finally, manage the project to completion. Rushabh Doshi, former Director of Engineering and Product Management at Facebook, provides his perspective of process in his

bug tracking doc

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A systematic approach to product quality can help produce a product that is a joy to use—a product that feels polished and fast, one that customers keep returning to over and over again.

To build that systematic approach, you’re going to need a way to track tasks while providing meaningful visibility to your stakeholders, without redundant data entry.

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Standardize your product requirements doc (PRD).

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Successful PRDs are specific enough to get useful feedback and concise enough that people actually read them—a difficult balance to strike. With a precise set of prompts and launch checklists,

Yuhki developed this doc

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to be customized and duplicated for each of your team’s projects.

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Map Jira issues directly to your OKRs.

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Whichever strategy you choose, you need to be SMART. Break down your OKRs into Jira issues, and then measure your work with an automatically-updating progress bar, with this tracker template. Add this table to your own doc by typing /Jira issues with OKRs and connecting the Jira Pack. These

OKR examples

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might come in handy.

Goal Name

Jira Issues

Jira Progress

Roll out pricing beta to 20 users

Add one-click checkout option to shopping cart

Conduct 30 customer interviews

Improve onboarding retention by 10%

Migrate from Azure to Snowflake

Shake Android app to share

5,000 mobile app store downloads

Add “fun fact of the day” to login

Add 1Password support

SEO optimization

Shake Android app to share

There are no rows in this table

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Visualize your progress.

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Cross-functional alignment isn’t the easiest thing to come by, but it sure will make the journey to launching your features smoother. Give your stakeholders a clear picture of where you’re going and where you’ve been with this intuitive dashboard. Add it to your doc by typing /product roadmap. Need more context? Try this

project roadmap

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doc.

Edit the roadmap—the timeline will update automatically. 👇

New Login

Re-design

Lots o' bugs

Q2 2019

Q3 2019

Q4 2019

Q1 2020

New Login

Re-design

Lots o' bugs

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Feature

Kickoff Date

Launch Date

Duration

Effort

New Login

4/15/2019

7/24/2019

100 days

🐜 Small

Re-design

7/1/2019

12/30/2019

182 days

⛰ Large

Lots o' bugs

9/9/2019

12/2/2019

84 days

🌴 Medium

There are no rows in this table

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And then squash bugs.

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Even Coda has its share of bugs.

We use a doc just like this one

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to report, track, and close them.

👉 Explore other useful drag-and-drop templates:

Project management

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Given the state of work, we’re all challenged to create the perfect environment for our teams. And while you may not be able to create a perfect office, you can create a perfect doc—a space as collaborative, creative, and unique as your team.

If you need help building docs or have tips for making beautiful docs, please share on

https://community.coda.io/

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💡 Have a drag-and-drop template idea? Email

help@coda.io

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to let us know!

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A few of the 25,000+ teams that 🏃‍♀️ on Coda.

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Coda is an all-in-one doc for your team’s unique processes — the rituals that help you succeed. Teams that use Coda get rid of hundreds of documents, spreadsheets, and even bespoke apps, to work quickly and clearly in one place. This template is a Coda doc. Click around to explore.

Find out how to Coda-fy your rituals.

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Connect with a Rituals Architect

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