Product Process Updates

I know that in the past, while my title was Chief Product Officer, I wasn't really that involved in overseeing and managing the day to day of what was going on within the organization as it relates to our products. Since our recent restructuring, however, I plan to be taking on that role in a much more direct, hands-on capacity, and to that end I would like to request a few changes that will make that easier for me (and hopefully easier for everyone else too).

The first thing relates to any new products, changes, or initiatives that people in the organization want to suggest or bring to the table. I would like to request that these all go through me first and be communicated via a new channel in Slack that will be created and dedicated to this purpose. I will review everything posted in that channel on a daily basis and work with @LivingSoil and @Chiclet to decide if each thing is something we want/are able to do and prioritize/organize them appropriately. This channel will be open to everyone and there can be comments / discussions on the items in threads and we can break certain items out to separate channels or have meetings about them if necessary.

Some examples of things that would be appropriate for this channel are new promo cards or deals from sales and marketing, new feature suggestions like recent brawl/tournament updates from @weirdbeard, quality of life changes and suggestions from support, new product ideas from @aggroed, etc. I plan to respond at minimum with an :eyes emoji to indicate that I have seen it and that it will start going through the process. If, after 24 hours, there is no indication that I've seen something or there is no update on the status of it, please feel free to ping me about it.

The second thing relates to daily updates from all of the individual contributors on the three product teams within the organization. I am respectfully requesting that everyone working on building out the product (mostly devs and creatives) publish an update in the appropriate slack channel once per day with a quick overview of what they have done over the past day, what they're planning to work on over the next day, and any blockers/questions they have. Screenshots or links are highly encouraged so others can see your work. Even if things aren't complete yet, that's fine.

I plan to create three different slack channels for these updates, one for each of the three product teams (infra, enhancements, and platform) but everyone from all three teams will have access to see and participate in each of the three channels. As with the new stuff channel described above, we can comment/discuss each update in a thread and break it out or have a meeting about something if needed. I also plan to respond to every update, every day, with an :eyes emoji to indicate that I have read it. If anyone feels that I have missed something, feel free to ping me about it, and if anyone needs something from me, please ping/tag me and don't feel like you need to wait for your next daily update.

I want to also add that none of the above replaces Jira in any way. @LivingSoil @Chiclet and I will still be working on keeping Jira organized and updated and we also ask for all of your help in doing that. That means posting updates / info in the appropriate Jira tasks and updating their status when appropriate. Hopefully this is not too much of a pain for everyone and will just become a quick and easy thing that we all get used to doing. I strongly believe it will help make us much more efficient, organized, and reduce miscommunications between groups. I am also very open to feedback and changes to this process as we begin to try it out and see what works and what doesn't.

Finally, I want to thank everyone for being open to giving this a try and for sticking with us and stepping up when we need it!