Product Review Process Doc - Opendoor

The following template was inspired by Tom Willerer’s Product Review Process that he used while he was the CPO of Opendoor to help create a stronger product review process across teams.

# Product Review Process Doc - Opendoor

The following template was inspired by [**Tom **](https://www.linkedin.com/in/twillerer/)[**Willerer’s** ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/twillerer/)Product Review Process that he used while he was the CPO of Opendoor.

He recommends creating a document like this to share with any new product team members or anyone joining a product review for the first time.

You can see the original artifact with notations here: [**Product Review Process at Opendoor**](https://artifacts.reforge.com/artifacts/product-review-process-at-opendoor#79754afb-0907-4022-b308-0c1abfd60726)**.**

Additionally we have turned this artifact into a blank template that you can start editing for free here:** [Product Review Process Template - Opendoor](https://whimsical.com/product-review-process-template-opendoor-S6rqP5SgBqVZoN1sb2VydS)**

# How We Do Product Reviews At Opendoor

## Approach

At Opendoor, we want Product Review meetings to focus on fostering debate, curiosity, and rigorous product thinking. They are a tool for driving innovation, strategic alignment, and debating trade offs. They do not have to be a decision making meeting to be effective, and – in fact – often it’s better to not try to make decisions in a product review. The mindset you should have going into a Product Review is one of high conviction but willing to be convinced that you are wrong or at least partially off course. You’d rather learn that now than after you spend the time and effort to launch whatever it is you are planning.

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## Focus

Product Review meetings should focus on the following dimensions. These can serve as a general outline for the pre-read you send out and for the meeting time together.

- **The customer problems to be solved, or **[**Jobs to be done**](https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done). We as PMs spend too little time on the problem space and instead tend to focus on solutions. Solutions are more fun but as Einstein supposedly said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” The same should be true of Product Reviews. We should focus them on the key customer problems to be solved and drive debate and alignment around that.

- **The **[**hypotheses**](https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/hypothesis-testing)** you have for solving the problem.** Once we’ve defined the problem space, it is important to then explore the range of hypotheses for why a particular solution might solve the problems you’ve identified \(or Jobs to be done\). Hypotheses are typically if-then statements, e.g. if we build xyz then qrs will happen and should be mapped to the core problems already identified.

- **The strategic alignment and differentiation.** The PM needs to show why this particular problem/solution is worth spending resources on now given all the other competing priorities and how solving this problem will further differentiate the company and product from competitors, if at all.

- **The phase of the project you are talking about**. There are multiple phases to a project from early to late stage and can be thought of on a spectrum from the “Understand/Define stage” to the “Explore stage” and finally the “Refine/Ship stage”. Each of these stages require different feedback and from different people.

- **The key success metrics.** It is critical to explain - up front - how you will know if the project is successful, and importantly, what is planned next given a few different possible outcomes.

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## Engagement

Creating a culture where debate, curiosity and rigorous product thinking are valued is not easy. Far too often Product Reviews can either be too intense and competitive or too soft, fuzzy, and non confrontational. Product Reviews are not a place to “earn points” by making the presenter look stupid but rather should be seen as a team sport where we’re all helping each other succeed so that we as a team can succeed. Here are some tips for how to engage in Product Reviews to get the most out of them:

- **As an Exec, I want to set the tone in the meetings that the PM is the decision maker, not me.** My job is to provide input, question things, ensure the team is solving the right problem and most importantly to empower my PM.

- **As a cross-functional partner, your job is to question the logic, debate the validity of the hypotheses** and whether the right jobs to be done have been identified and most importantly to clarify how this impacts your role, OKRs and the scope of your job going forward. Importantly, you should not present your opinions as a blocker \(e.g. “I wouldn’t do that”\) but instead open up new possibilities with phrases like, “How might we think about this more …” or “Have you considered xyz?”. Your job is to help the team presenting, so they need to hear you and not feel threatened by you.

- **As a core team member, your job is to help clarify when questions come up**, take not…