Parallel Product Development

A breakdown of how to manage multiple product teams while staying ahead of development cycles, based on Sam Ovens' approach at Skool.

Core Product Development Strategy

• Focus on product strategy and design as primary responsibilities
• Maintain 3 parallel full-stack product teams
  • Each team includes backend, frontend, QA, product manager, and designer
  • Teams work on separate roadmaps simultaneously
• Stay multiple development cycles ahead of teams
• Think through product strategy and roadmap comprehensively before execution

Product Planning Process

• Dream up complete product strategy and roadmap first
• Reverse engineer strategy into manageable chunks
• Break down into specific team assignments
• Sequence work appropriately across teams
• Design everything upfront before development begins
• Create detailed specs and briefs for each team

Daily Management Approach

• Split time between:
  • Product strategy planning
  • Design work
  • Priority setting
  • Engineering team communication
  • Final QA checks before production

Customer-Centric Development

• Spend significant time understanding community needs
• Review community feedback and bug reports
• Talk directly with power users
  • Identify top 100 users
  • Conduct zoom calls to gather detailed feedback
• Use the product personally
• Gather input from team members

Decision Making Framework

• Act as filter, sorter, and prioritizer of all ideas
• Balance multiple factors:
  • User needs and requests
  • Code cleanliness and technical debt
  • Development speed and efficiency
  • Feature scope and delivery timeline
• Remain open to engineering feedback about implementation
• Adjust features based on technical constraints
• Focus on keeping code clean while meeting user needs
• Optimize for faster delivery when possible

Quality Control

• Personally inspect pixel-level details
• Review final QA before production pushes
• Maintain high standards while not blocking team progress
• Use spare time for design system improvements
• Focus on collaboration rather than pure dictation