team-brief

Overview

Based on Empowered by Marty Cagan. The difference between a feature team and an empowered product team is what they're asked to deliver. Feature teams get a roadmap of features to build. Empowered teams get a problem to solve and the autonomy to figure out how.

A team brief is the artifact that makes empowerment concrete. It gives the team a clear outcome to own, context to understand the problem, and constraints to work within - without prescribing the solution.

Workflow

Step 1: Define the team's mission (one sentence)

The mission is why this team exists. It should be stable for 12-24 months. Format: "Enable [user type] to [achieve outcome] so that [business result]."

Example: "Enable [your product] users to onboard independently so that time-to-first-value drops under 3 days."

Step 2: Set the objective (this quarter)

One specific outcome the team owns this quarter. This is NOT a feature - it's a measurable change in user or business behavior.

Bad: "Build a new onboarding flow" Good: "Increase onboarding completion rate from 45% to 70%"