How To Build Products During an Economic Recession: Three Important Tips
Here are ways you can improve your productivity and stabilize your product team during times of economic downturn.
1. Do Prioritization the Right Way
Everyone knows that we have to prioritize, with or without a recession.
But is there a “right” way to do it when a team is under strict moments?
When there are budget constraints during a recession, three main factors come up during prioritization: high priority business goals, dev months, and capacity. Let’s quickly cover these and how you can use them to prioritize better.
a) High Priority Business Goals
Every team has that “star” business metric or goal which CANNOT be deprioritized, no matter what state. At the very least, it would be the last area to take a cut. Doing so could threaten business stability.
If you’re in a team or environment suffering from ambiguity regarding this certain business direction, it’d be great to ask a few questions:
- Which areas of our business or product cannot be touched, otherwise it would threaten our core stream of income?
- How much % of our bandwidth and resources can we allocate to “maintaining” our product, as opposed to innovating? For example, some teams would put 70% of their time into maintaining a decade-old cash cow, but 30% of their time would be spent on innovative projects. Ones which will not only ensure it stays relevant, but introducing new heights to both itself and the industry.
b) Developer Months
Here’s where the real factors determine actual coding allocation. Dev months, typically a unit measured via number of months required for ONE developer to complete a work item, is just one of many ways to determine how long and how much a project will require.
As a product manager (PM), even if engineering managers get the final say in allocating dev months (or any way of measuring developer resources), never fail to understand and question these decisions. Track dev months as much as your counterparts do, and ensure that they’re as sensible to you as they seem to others. Raise your voice when needed.
c) Various “RICE” matrices come into play
With the additional factors of business goals and dev months coming into play, ensure that your team’s version of a “RICE matrix” includes them, alongside everything else. During economic recessions, your team may have to modify the matrix.
Many RICE matrices are tailored to what the product team needs. For example, some may weigh “reach” more than “impact,” or some will replace these factors with something completely new. I’ve seen some teams use “capacity saved” as another variable in times of budget constraints. Most teams don’t even use “reach” and “impact” without being more specific. For example, engagement, in the form of clicks per day, can be a more specific metric to measure rather than a broader term like “impact.”
And let’s not also forget one of the important variables, if not the most important I just mentioned — which could easily be make or break — capacity. Let’s dive deeper on that.
2. Saving on capacity
In times of economic hardship, capacity will almost always be limited.
If your team doesn’t have any processors (GPUs, CPUs) or storage space to get the work done, then what’s the point in determining the other factors?
Leadership will often influence which teams/projects get allocated the most capacity. Sometimes, as a PM, things can be out of your control.
But what is in your control is what capacity you can manage. Everyone should remember that many machine learning (ML) models, artificial intelligence (AI) logic, and compiled software need “capacity” — in the form of high-end compute processing — to run properly.
For many startups and smaller teams, this means borrowing infrastructure, platforms, and cloud storage from larger services. These could come from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Oracle, and others. Everything has a compute cost attached to it. Ensuring the most important projects who have developers assigned to them are supported by efficient resources is obviously critical. Ask yourself:
Is the compute cost and dev months worth it for the ROI from completing this project?
For example, 5 GPUs and 2 dev months could be worth it for a potential project, which, if completed — will result in a long-term capacity saving of 10 GPUs.
For larger teams who own their own platforms and infrastructure, the question remains the same — although calculating compute costs may be easier at times.
3. How to keep team morale up
And finally, the last, but definitely not least! Giving shout-outs is great for team morale.
As a product manager, if your team members don’t buy into the project or feature as much as you have, then there’s no point in execution.
Before you jump into execution, make sure you’re still an advocate or evangelist for your product, even during a recession. Recessions could mean that your company had to layoff some folks, introduce harsh budget constraints, or cut projects which your team was excited to work on.
Here are some tips to weather the storm:
- Emphasize the long-term vision. Make. It. Clear. Whether that’s reminding folks during scrums, throwing it into a power point deck (PPT), or just simply saying so during 1:1s. Anything will help.
- Focus on the relationship with your Engineering Manager. Keep it strong. They are your gateway to supporting your dev team and ensuring everyone’s aligned.
- Vouch for “future growth allocation.” Remember the rule I mentioned above — the idea that some resources should still be allocated to “innovating,” and not just “maintaining?” Advocate for this if you see an opportunity for your team to still innovate at lower stakes.
About Me
My name is Kasey, AKA J.X. Fu (pen name). I’m passionate about (you guessed it) writing, and thus I’ve found myself deep in the abyss on weeknights creating novels while working a full-time tech PM job during the day. Follow me on Medium for more writing, product, gaming, productivity, and job-hunting tips! Check out my website and my Linktree, and add me on LinkedIn or Twitter, telling me you saw my articles!
Special thanks to Tremis Skeete, Executive Editor at Product Coalition for the valuable input which contributed to the editing of this article.
