PM Tools: The Callout

Product Managers must effectively communicate to stakeholders about the progress of their product in development. There are many tools they use to accomplish this task, arguably one of the most important is the Weekly Callout.

This callout is an internal one, for stakeholders within the company. One audience is your direct team, which could include engineers, data scientists, marketing professionals, research analysts, UX designers, sales and other operational groups. But ideally, there will exist interest from stakeholders in your leadership chain (think directors and VPs). Equally important are partner teams (upstream or downstream teams) who rely on your product.

Communicating to all these groups effectively and regularly can be difficult and time-consuming but it is an important part of a PM's job and helps build a foundation of trust throughout the organization.

Added Bonus

It also provides both (1) a handy record to track your team’s progress toward goals and (2) a method to hold yourself accountable. Often times it serves as an easy ‘brag piece’ for your director to point out what their organization is accomplishing without having to chase you down for color or details. It can be forwarded or certain passages can be easily ‘copied and pasted’ into higher-level communications. Make your director look good and you will be remembered.

Types of Callouts

There are traditionally two types of ‘Callouts’, what I call the standard and the urgent version. A director I worked with called the urgent version a ‘Flash’ which is more detailed, targetted, and focused with a short life span related to the run-up of a feature or product launch.

Formatting Note

Subheads, charts, graphs and strategic bolding go along way. Busy, only half-interested people will not read long, dense emails. Using headers and subheads to helps folks skim and absorb your message quickly.

Modify for the culture of your organization

When I used this format at Yelp, I found it easier to create three versions (1) one for the immediate team that was more technical and execution focused, (2) a second for people at or below my level but across the entire product organization and (3) a third for VPs and the C-Suite. Not everyone has to communicate to the C-Suite but I found that the details that helped the team distracted executives. So I leveraged SCR (see McKinsey Situation-Complication-Resolution) guidelines.

Note: To any Amazonians reading, this callout guideline is a modification, not letter-perfect version of what you may use.

The Callout

The weekly Callout is sent once a week (or at least every other week) to a list of stakeholders to update them on the progress of your product. To start, it goes to you your manager and co-workers, maybe a director and your main engineering partner. Eventually, the audience increases as word gets out about what you are building.

The Flash

If you have a much-anticipated feature or product launch, it can be helpful to send out a Daily Flash to stakeholders letting them know how the rollout is going almost daily. Sending out daily metrics updates as well as hits and misses can be helpful for you and your leadership team. Throw in a few screen grabs and quotes from early testers or users.

Anatomy of a PM Callout

TL;DR

Too Long; Didn’t Read. This is where you summarize for the busy executive. Give them enough so they can decide if they want to keep reading. Follow the rule of three. No more than three sentences. No more than three key points.

Goals

Next, state your team’s top goals for the quarter and the year. It should be listed in a grid in the S.M.A.R.T. (Specific. Measurable. Actionable. Relevant. Time-Bound.) goal format, along with a column for ‘due date and ‘status’.

Having goals upfront helps anchor readers on what is driving you and the team.

Hits, Misses & Learnings

This is the meat of your callout. Typically, you can find one of each per week. Or you have things that cross over several weeks and you can stage when you present them to stakeholders. It shows progress, bias for action, ownership, and transparency, as well as curiosity to learn. Give credit to the team members who enabled the hits (wins).

Deep Dive

Typically there will be something within one of the above that will warrant a slightly more detailed explanation. Maybe some screen grabs to illustrate a feature or a problem. It gives you a chance to highlight the successes of individual team members. You get to properly callout someone going above and beyond. Or you can showcase a key learning.

Product Metrics

There should be a shortlist of key product metrics you are looking at every Monday morning. You are looking to see how these go up or down. Based on their movement, you may need to make adjustments. You typically want to list a top outcome measure, a few inputs and outputs. (See business performance metrics for more on inputs and outputs.)

Credits

It is important to credit the team, particularly the engineers, for the work done. If you think no one is reading your callouts you will quickly find out just how many engineers have been following along when they point out you inadvertently forget to list someone on the team. List their name, title and role on the team.

I once forgot to list an engineering manager who was my friend and he was so offended it threw me off guard. I had seriously offended him even though he knew it was an accident. The people who build your product take pride in what they do and if you are acknowledging team successes they want to be sure they are included and acknowledged, especially if executives read your communications.

So as a matter of habit, you should list the names of all the engineers and engineering leads and managers at the bottom of your callout. Be sure to take the extra time to check the team directory and team manager to make sure you got everyone on the team before hitting send. (Once you have the team list down, you can copy and paste from week-to-week.)

Roadmap (Quick View)

(Optional) This can be just a link or a screengrab of the highlights if your stakeholders find it helpful. The goals at the top cover most of what matters but some followers like to know what is coming up next on your roadmap.

Practical Hints:

Interest List

Develop an email interest list that people can sign up for. If someone wants to join, you can add them to it or have them self-subscribe. That saves you from having to remember individual names or copy and paste the send list every week.

Blind Copy

Put the interest list in bcc field, that way you save yourself and others from the embarrassment of the ‘reply all error’ we have all suffered through. As an added bonus, if someone asks a tough question, it will only come to you and you can control the response and the readership of the response.

You will miss a few weeks

Strive to send it every week, but don’t kill yourself when you miss a week or two. But don’t get too comfortable, have a teammate keep you honest. Typically, your boss will keep you honest when they notice it is missing.

Keep it small and close to start

If your company has never done weekly callout emails, it might veer into the territory of uncomfortable ‘over-communication’ to send it weekly. So maybe start within your team or with monthly versions. Slowly increase the distribution list and the frequency until you find the right cadency.

A Sample

Here is a template you can use.

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash