Creating a product team from scratch
A guide for creating a newsroom product team with limited or existing resources
Presented by Jessica Morrison and Kate Travis
INTRODUCTION
Starting a product team in a small newsroom can feel like a daunting task: Everyone already wears multiple hats, and no one has capacity to spare. But look at it this way: organizing a team around product is an opportunity to collaborate and communicate more efficiently about work that people are already doing. By setting some groundwork from the beginning, the structure of a product team ensures that the people interested in and affected by the team’s work — from staff members to key leadership and decision-makers — are involved in the process in a meaningful way.
Whether your news organization is launching a newsletter, building an app, or trying to decide if it’s time to say goodbye to a waning podcast, there are some essential players you need buy-in from to ensure that the product team succeeds and has the support it needs to thrive. Then, the team itself will need representatives from across your organization. And you need ways to measure your progress and your success.
With some core organization steps and a healthy dose of enthusiasm, a product team can unite the efforts of an entire organization onto one roadmap, ensuring resources are allocated wisely and everyone is working toward the same goals.
In this guide, we’ll offer tips for building a product team for the first time. Not all of this advice will apply to everyone, and even if it does, it will play out a bit differently in every newsroom.
IN PRACTICE
Use the tips and concepts in this section to cultivate a product culture in your newsroom
If you’re responsible for building a new team for your newsroom, you might already be thinking about the people you want on the team, the mix of skills and responsibilities, and the work that the team will contribute. Draft a one-page team charter to document those ideas and help you explain the role of your product team within the larger organization.
A team charter allows you to explain the purpose of the product team and draw clear boundaries around the team’s domain of expertise. Include who is on the team (roles, not individual people) and the team’s responsibility (strategy, research, development, etc.). Draft the team charter before you formally pitch or build the team to help stakeholders connect with your aims and goals in starting the team.
Recruit leaders to be stakeholders (and turn them into advocates)
Involving leaders in your organization from the beginning will be extremely helpful for buy-in and collaboration. That should include key decision-makers from each of your organization’s business units, such as the heads of editorial, operations, creative, engineering, and revenue.
When you’re ready to pitch your product team, start with the leader you work with the most and focus on why you want to create a product team. Those reasons might include:
Centralizing resources
Better communication across departments about the work being done
Ensuring the organization doesn’t overcommit itself, as can easily happen when working in silos.
Emphasize that much of what the team will do aligns with goals the organization (probably) already has, but will formalize a structure for getting the work done. As you turn your newsroom leader into a product team advocate, engage them to help you recruit the rest of the stakeholder team. Share your team charter and invite feedback to further build buy-in.
Build your team
Once you’ve got the support from your key stakeholders, it’s time to build the team. The team should have representation from each key business unit in your organization, including technology, marketing, publishing and fundraising. It should include people with roles essential to product development, such as designers, developers, audience engagement, and writers and editors. The goal is not to bring in the people who will do all the work for every product development project, but to get representation and people who can recruit resources as they’re needed.
You can seek volunteers — after all, you want enthusiastic people on the team. But keep the core team to a manageable size. You want broad representation, but larger teams can get difficult to manage (not to mention difficult to schedule meetings with). Surplus volunteers will be helpful later on for tasks such as research or testing for a specific product. And if you lack internal expertise for a particular project, you might need to bring in freelance help.
Democratize team planning and decision-making
Once your team is assembled, establish how you will work together. It’s helpful to solidify and document this framework at the outset. (Here’s an example.)
How often will you meet?
How will you track your work?
How will you ensure progress?
Who will assign work? Who will sign off on work?
Find more on choosing a product development method here.
Regardless of the method you choose, be sure that everyone on the team has a way to participate. This might come in the form of running the meeting, taking notes, assigning tasks, or recruiting volunteers for a particular project. Make sure the people on the team are empowered to make decisions for the department or role they represent.
For each product the team works on, define specific roles using a tool like the RACI/RASCI framework. Above all, make sure you know who needs to approve the final product, and that person knows that’s their role before the project work begins.
Perform regular retrospectives
Just as your team provides care and maintenance to your news org’s products, it’s important to care for your team. Devote time each year, or perhaps a couple of times a year, to evaluate how the team is working using a process called a retrospective. Do you have a defined roadmap? Are you able to stick to it? Are communications channels working effectively? What are the biggest blockers to progress?
You might also consider doing a retrospective with each project. A retrospective can give people outside the core product team a chance to provide feedback as well. What went well? What didn’t go as well as it could have? What would you change for next time? This process can highlight recurring issues that can be adjusted, such as communication, process, roadblocks, resources, and more. It establishes the practice of giving and receiving feedback, and it encourages agility in your work.
TERMS
Definitions for product terms referenced in this guide are sourced from NPA’s crowd-sourced product glossary
Roadmap
A forward-looking list of business or product priorities, often visible to teams, the company, or the public. Roadmap initiatives or tasks might be grouped by time or feature.
Retrospective
An organized, collaborative look back at how a project went. Common questions answered by the team during a retrospective include: what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what should do differently next time?
Stakeholder
The people with interest in or who may be affected by a product’s outcome. Stakeholders may be internal and cross-departmental (e.g. editorial, marketing, development, etc.), and external (e.g. product audience/user base).
RACI/RASCI
A responsibility assignment matrix that includes the Responsible (a person doing work to complete a task), the Accountable (a person delegating and reviewing work), the Consulted (the people who provide feedback on how their work will be affected), and the Informed (the people who need to be kept up to date on progress).
RELATED READINGS / RESOURCES
We Built a Product Team in One Year: Here's Everything We Learned - ONA 2019
Kickoff Kit: Tools to Help Teams Work Better Together - NYT Open
Consenting to decisions - A Working Library
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jessica Morrison
Jessica Morrison works with News Catalyst to empower journalism creators and founders to put their ideas into action through cycles of experimentation and evaluation. Morrison is also the founder of the Baking Notification Project, an indie startup that helps home bakers connect with their neighbors to share small gifts of food. Morrison was previously a product director and policy reporter at Chemical & Engineering News, an editorial fellow at Nature, a health reporting fellow at the Charlotte Observer, and a science reporting fellow at the Chicago Tribune. She earned a B.S. from Middle Tennessee State University, where she studied geology and journalism, and a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame, where she studied uranium geochemistry.
Kate Travis
Kate Travis is a journalist, editor, project manager and product thinker with a concentration on science news for a broad range of audiences. Most recently she was the digital director at Science News, a century-old magazine on scientific research and discovery. She was the product manager of the Science News website and oversaw digital news production, video, multimedia, analytics, newsletters and audience engagement. She is the author of the chapter on measuring a story’s success for The Tactical Guide to Science Journalism (Oxford University Press, 2022) and has given presentations at recent annual meetings of the News Product Alliance, National Association of Science Writers and Society for News Design.