Build product excellence through transparent, company-wide monthly reviews that everyone can understand
Key Insight: Achieving product excellence is a continuous journey requiring regular reflection, clear communication, and ongoing improvement. One essential component of this journey is the monthly Product Excellence Review—a company-wide meeting where teams collaboratively examine the quality, stability, efficiency, and overall health of the product.
This comprehensive guide provides everything you need to conduct impactful Product Excellence Reviews that are easy to understand for all employees, not just technical and product teams. We'll cover best practices, how to present learnings and improvements clearly, and the importance of incorporating perspectives from customer-facing roles.
What is a Product Excellence Review?
A Product Excellence Review is a structured monthly session where various teams including QA, Engineering, Product Management, Customer Support, and other stakeholders jointly analyze key indicators such as bugs, incidents, system stability, performance, and customer satisfaction.
The Goal: Not merely reporting data but sharing clear insights and outlining actionable improvements comprehensible to everyone in the company.
Why Conduct Monthly Product Excellence Reviews?
Regular reviews help organizations:
Enhance Transparency
Foster cross-departmental understanding and open communication
Identify Patterns
Proactively manage risks and prevent future issues
Foster Accountability
Build teamwork and shared responsibility across the entire company
Strengthen Satisfaction
Rapidly address customer issues and demonstrate commitment to improvement
Who Should Attend and Present?
Include diverse roles to ensure broad perspectives and comprehensive understanding:
QA Manager:
Clearly explains quality trends, the severity and frequency of bugs, and areas needing attention.
SRE (Site Reliability Engineers):
Shares incidents, uptime metrics, and system reliability in easy-to-understand terms.
Staff Engineers:
Discusses technical challenges and improvements without overly technical jargon.
Engineering Directors:
Clarify strategic improvements, aligning them with company-wide goals.
Product Managers:
Explain customer feedback, product improvements, and user experiences.
Customer Support Representatives:
Highlight real customer experiences, satisfaction scores, and how incidents or bugs impact users directly.
Streamline Your Product Excellence Reviews
Automatically compile and visualize critical product health metrics in an easily understandable format suitable for all employees.
Start Your Free TrialBest Practices for Inclusive Product Excellence Reviews
1. Easy-to-Understand Presentations
Avoid technical jargon. Clearly explain metrics and issues using relatable examples and simple language:
- Use visuals such as graphs, simple diagrams, and screenshots
- Clearly define any technical terms used
- Share relatable customer stories to demonstrate real-world impacts
2. Structured and Clear Agenda
Distribute a straightforward agenda ahead of time, including sections such as:
- Overview of key monthly metrics
- Examples of significant incidents and their impacts
- Clear analysis of bug trends and stability
- Real customer experiences and satisfaction
- Concrete proposals for improvement
3. Presenting Learnings and Improvements
Clearly outline learnings and actionable improvements:
Present discoveries in simple terms:
"This month we discovered that delays in customer logins were caused by increased load that we did not anticipate."
Propose improvements in a clear manner:
"To address this, we will enhance our system's ability to scale automatically during peak times. This improvement is expected to significantly reduce login issues."
4. Including Customer Impact
Invite presentations from customer-facing roles to share insights:
Customer Support Example:
"Due to login issues, we received double the usual number of support tickets. Customers expressed frustration, affecting satisfaction ratings. Addressing this issue quickly is critical."
Product Expert Example:
"After recent improvements, we've seen increased customer satisfaction in our surveys, particularly noting faster and more reliable service."
5. Collaborative Discussions
Facilitate engaging discussions by asking relatable questions:
"What challenges do our customers currently face?"
"How can each team contribute to solving these problems?"
"What simple actions can we take immediately?"
6. Clear and Accountable Action Items
End each review with clear, documented next steps:
- Clearly state action items and their expected outcomes
- Assign specific owners and timelines
- Communicate these items to the whole company for transparency
Using UpReport to Simplify Data Preparation
Gathering and presenting clear, understandable data for these meetings can be challenging. UpReport simplifies this process by:
Automatic Compilation
Automatically compiles and visualizes critical product health metrics
Clear Presentation
Presents data in an easily understandable format suitable for all employees
Focus on Insights
Allows teams to focus on insights and improvement rather than data gathering
"UpReport helps us clearly communicate how our product is performing, ensuring everyone—from engineers to customer support—can easily understand and participate in product excellence."
Example Monthly Product Excellence Review Agenda
| Time | Topic | Presenter |
|---|---|---|
| 10 min | Clear Overview of Monthly Metrics | Engineering Director |
| 10 min | Quality and Bugs: Easy-to-Understand Insights | QA Manager |
| 10 min | System Stability & Incidents Explained Simply | SRE Lead |
| 10 min | Customer Impact & Real User Stories | Customer Support/Product Expert |
| 10 min | Learnings and Clear Improvement Proposals | Staff Engineer |
| 10 min | Customer Feedback and Satisfaction Update | Product Manager |
| 10 min | Open Discussion and Action Planning | Facilitated by Director |
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Excessive Technical Detail:
Aim for clarity over depth. Make information accessible to all team members.
Neglecting Customer Impact:
Always tie issues clearly to customer experiences and business outcomes.
Failing to Follow-Up:
Assign clear tasks and regularly update the entire company on progress.
Reference Links and Resources
- Accelerate by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim
- Google Site Reliability Engineering
- UpReport Platform
Conclusion
Monthly Product Excellence Reviews can significantly strengthen your product, culture, and customer relationships. By clearly communicating metrics, customer impacts, learnings, and improvements in ways everyone can understand, companies can achieve genuine product excellence together.
Remember: The goal is not perfection but continuous improvement through transparency, collaboration, and shared understanding across all teams.