How companies & product teams can survive COVID-19

With COVID-19 in full swing, today’s businesses must adapt faster than ever. Travel restrictions, quarantines, and business closures are all having a detrimental effect on our economy, way of life, and livelihoods. As product managers, we are the linchpins governing the decision-making process, requiring constant communication with our stakeholders. On a good day, this comes with many difficulties, but during a pandemic, when everyone is working remotely, these challenges multiply exponentially. 

Pre-pandemic, product managers had to be ‘physically agile’–whether it was jumping from room to room for meetings, brainstorming with developers on the fly or talking to sales about an upcoming feature: face-to-face interactions formed a critical part of how most PMs managed collaboration and communication. This manifested as a fusion of online and offline activities, but whether you were typing out group emails one-minute or holding face-to-face meetings the next, it was all done with the purpose of getting everyone on the same page. 

But today, in a #WFH world, product managers are suddenly faced with the challenges of coordinating and collaborating remotely. Losing the benefit of F2F daily stand-ups or popping over to a colleague’s desk to ask a quick question means that we now must rely even more intensely on our digital tools. More than ever, we need to feel in control and be on top of all item statuses so that we can maintain a sense of assurance and confidence in the product we’re building. With everyone working from home, synching together needs to happen not just more regularly, but more efficiently in order for us to connect the dots, communicate our message, and manage the entire process from A to Z.

In addition to ensuring seamless continuity and collaboration between various teams, a core responsibility of a product manager is to keep the product and company leadership informed of everything in development and what is planned for the future. Even before COVID-19, this was complex to achieve, but when working remotely, it becomes increasingly more challenging for product leaders to get a birds-eye-view of the entire production operation. 

So how can product teams maintain clarity, control, and focus during these trying times? Well, for one, they need the appropriate tools to support their new remote work environment.

Working remotely means an organization must lean into the right set of tools to help them meet their objectives. For video conferencing, that might be Zoom, Teams, or GoToMeeting, while for file sharing and synchronization, that might be Google Drive or Dropbox. But most critical to a product manager is a tool that connects both the strategic, prioritization and planning elements and the communication requirements of their role.

Now more than ever, product teams need a truly holistic, all-encompassing view of all workstreams to ensure the company’s efforts are focused on the right things. A product like craft.io, for example, achieves this by functioning as the product system-of-record for all things product-related and providing a structured space for discussions. Through its integrations, craft.io keeps all information synced, current, and most accurate, allowing product managers to make decisions based on contextualized insights instead of fragmented activities. 

As the dedicated product tool, craft.io can properly facilitate a company’s collaboration by providing everyone (from developers to senior management) one place to sync and collaborate effectively and with ease. Because craft.io harnesses the entire product management process with transparency, remote team members consequently experience increased confidence in the decision-making process, which ultimately results in smoother, more efficient stakeholder communication for product managers. It’s the glue that keeps everything (and everyone) working together, and the engine that can keep a remote project moving forward.

Despite the current turbulent situation, we need to find the tools as product managers to collaborate with and lead our teams successfully. We should tap into our natural adaptability, access smarter resources, and ensure our teams feel empowered to collaborate and connect with one another. Ensure you’ve got the right tools lined up, and you’re on the right path to building a product team that can work remotely with confidence.