Product Team Canvas

What is it?

A "one-pager" where anyone should be able to go to and within minutes have a good grasp of the shape of a product team's domain, be it personnel, tech, ways of working, or wider business context.

How to use it

Creating a canvas as a group can be a really insightful exercise. It gives you the best possible coverage of your domain (as none of you will know every single nook and cranny!), and it also helps to get you all on the same page. You can create one on your own though, or in a smaller group, so don't let this hold you back.

The canvas is typically populated from the top left, with the earlier sections informing some of those towards the bottom right. Some elements will likely require input from specialists within your team. For example, your user researcher may be best placed to populate the 'User research' panel, and your tech lead could cover the 'Architecture' panel.

Regularly reviewing and refreshing it is also advised, particularly if there is handballed data in there from other sources. Having data a month or two out of date is a lot better than having nothing, but if you let it drift too long, that staleness can put potential readers off and bring into question the accuracy and value of your canvas.

Lastly, make sure you put it out there. Have a link to it in a pinned post in your Teams channel, or in your Slack intro bot. Share it with your stakeholders. Step through it in communities of practice. Get it up on screen in collaborative sessions and use it as a frame of reference. Squeeze every drop of value from it that you can.

See our article at https://www.hyperact.co.uk/blog/product-team-canvas for further guidance and inspiration.

Credit to Jeff Bonevich for his C4 Architecture template.