Product Thinking Workshop
Setting the Foundations for Building High-Performing Product Teams
“ The workshop Chris facilitated expertly for us was exactly the foundation our teams needed to realise that being both effective and efficient is crucial to our sustainable success. ”
— Sarah Guha, Director of Product
Building High-Performing Product Teams Together
Key Outcomes
Unified teams around the shared goal of delivering value to customers
Identified tangible opportunities for improvement in product operations
Introduced the “Lean Capability Canvas” as a tool for continuous reflection and growth
Highlighted the critical balance between efficiency and effectiveness
In May 2024, Hometrack (part of Zoopla) partnered with Product Ops Consultant Chris Compston to deliver a workshop designed to enable stronger product thinking mindset. The session aimed to empower product teams with the principles and practices necessary to become high-performing product teams.
The interactive workshop addressed essential questions, such as how to define high performance and how to develop stronger alignment within teams. It left participants with actionable insights, a practical framework for continuous improvement, and a renewed commitment to delivering customer-centric products.
“ Each and every product team now feels empowered to drive continuous improvement. “
— Sarah Guha, Director of Product
Challenge: Aligning to Drive Customer-Centric Outcomes
Hometrack’s teams, like many product organisations, faced challenges in aligning cross-functional groups and defining what high performance looked like in practice. While delivering efficiently at pace was a strength, the teams sought to improve their effectiveness—ensuring they were not just building quickly, but building the right products.
Focus Areas
Aligning product managers, technical leads, data analysts, and sales teams on what success looks like
Improving the quality of decision-making across teams
Creating a shared understanding of how to achieve measurable, customer-centric outcomes
Author: Sarah, Director of Product
Chris Compston facilitated a dynamic, collaborative workshop that engaged teams in redefining high performance, identifying improvement opportunities, and embedding product thinking principles into their work.
Defining High-Performing Teams
Teams explored the characteristics of successful product organisations, emphasising shared priorities:
• Delivering at Pace: Maintaining momentum toward releases
• Customer Obsession: Prioritising customer needs and preferences
• Embracing Failure: Using failure as a stepping stone for innovation
• Outcome-Oriented KPIs: Setting measurable goals to track success
The teams distilled their insights into a unified definition: “We consistently deliver things to customers that they value enough to pay for.”
Principles of Product Thinking
Participants ranked nine core principles of product thinking to assess Hometrack’s maturity and identify key opportunities for growth. While strengths included Long-Term Vision, Product-Market Fit, and Customer Centricity, opportunities for improvement emerged around:
• Data-Informed Decisions: Ensuring teams rely on evidence rather than instinct
• Feedback Loops: Creating continuous channels for learning and iteration
• Measurable Outcomes: Defining and tracking clear success metrics
Lean Capability Canvas
The workshop introduced the Lean Capability Canvas, a practical tool for product teams to assess their current capabilities and define their desired state. Teams used the canvas to; reflect on existing practices, identify gaps and opportunities for growth and set actionable commitments for improvement.
Developing Continuous Improvement
By focusing on both efficiency (building the thing right) and effectiveness (building the right thing), the workshop encouraged teams to balance short-term wins with long-term strategic goals.
Solution: Enabling a Product Thinking Mindset
Impact: A Path Toward Product Excellence
The workshop left Hometrack’s teams with a clear roadmap for transitioning to the product operating model and becoming high-performing product teams through embedding product thinking into their day-to-day operations.
Results Achieved
• Enhanced alignment across roles, developing stronger collaboration
• Clear focus on measurable outcomes and customer-centric decision-making
• Adoption of the Lean Capability Canvas for ongoing reflection and optimisation
• Renewed emphasis on balancing efficiency with effectiveness
Empowering Teams for
Sustainable Success
Conclusion
Chris’ workshop enabled Hometrack to embrace a product thinking mindset, setting the stage for long-term success. By focusing on shared goals, measurable outcomes, and continuous improvement, Hometrack’s teams are now better equipped to deliver exceptional value to their customers.
Testimonial
Sarah Guha
Director of Product
“The workshop Chris facilitated expertly for us was exactly the foundation our teams needed to realise that being both effective and efficient is crucial to our sustainable success, but will only get us so far! It helped crystallise, in a memorable way, the benefits of being effective as well as efficient. Each and every team now feels empowered to drive continuous improvement.”