Free tools · Elle Anderson · andersonco.ukThe Product Organisation Health Check
Thirty statements about how your product organisation actually runs, as opposed to how the operating model slides say it runs. Score what happened in the last quarter. Best run with your leadership team scoring independently, then comparing: the disagreements are the findings. Nothing you enter leaves this page.
Strategy and bets
1. We can state our product strategy in three sentences, and the last three roadmap decisions visibly followed from it.
2. Every major initiative is framed as a hypothesis with a falsifiable success measure and a date.
3. We have killed or descoped something meaningful in the last two quarters because the evidence said so.
4. We say no in public: stakeholders can see what was deprioritised and why.
5. The strategy names the customer problems we are betting on, not just the technologies we are adopting.
Customer and discovery
6. Someone on each product team spoke to a real customer in the last two weeks.
7. Discovery findings change decisions: we can point to a recent build reshaped or stopped by research.
8. We watch behaviour, not just listen to opinions: analytics and research are used together.
9. Frontline colleagues have a working route to feed what they hear into product decisions.
10. We know which segment each product primarily serves, and our metrics are cut by it.
Delivery and flow
11. Work flows in small batches: the typical item reaches customers in weeks, not quarters.
12. We measure flow (cycle time, waiting, throughput), not just velocity and utilisation.
13. All work is visible, including support, favours and incidents; the board reflects true capacity.
14. Dependencies between teams are visible and actively managed, not discovered at integration.
15. Done means in customers' hands, and everyone uses the word that way.
People and capability
16. Product people have a published career path, and someone moved along it in the last year.
17. Managers coach: 1:1s are about problems and growth, not status reporting.
18. We can name each product person's current stretch, the thing they are learning by doing.
19. Communities of practice exist, meet, and change how work is done.
20. Capability is assessed against a shared framework, so development plans are specific.
AI and data readiness
21. Our AI initiatives are framed by customer outcome; each could be described without naming the technology.
22. For every AI feature, someone owns: what happens when it's wrong, and what does that cost?
23. Evals, thresholds and kill criteria exist as product artefacts, reviewed by product.
24. We know the unit economics: cost per interaction today and the curve at ten times the volume.
25. Product managers use AI in their own daily work; the capability is practised, not sponsored.
Leadership and operating model
26. Decisions have named owners; teams know which are theirs and which need escalation.
27. Leadership reviews outcomes and bets, not activity and utilisation.
28. Funding follows products and outcomes, not annual project business cases.
29. When something fails, we run a blameless review and can name what changed after the last one.
30. The operating model has been deliberately revisited in the last year, not inherited by habit.