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Staffing and developing capability

Plan how smaller teams gain the skills and judgment they need. Connect staffing decisions with coaching, career development, and Enabling Team support.

Who it is for

Product Teams

Product and functional leaders responsible for staffing and development.

People partners and experienced practitioners building coaching and Enabling Team support.

Duration
1/2 day

Inside the module

What the module covers

Stream Teams have only one or two people per craft, so every hiring and development decision carries more weight.

This half-day module helps the Product Team plan the skills its teams need, hire on evidence, and develop judgment through coaching and apprenticeship now that AI handles much of the routine work juniors used to learn on.

By the end, participants have practiced how to

  • Run a skills gap analysis at individual, team, and organizational level against the product strategy
  • Decide for each gap whether to hire, coach, train, run an apprenticeship, or draw on an Enabling Team (one or two senior practitioners who coach teams in one craft)
  • Design a hiring funnel on the ladder of evidence, moving from behavioral interviews to take-home assignments and trial periods
  • Rewrite performance levels around the four cognitive levels of work and the judgment calls each level requires
  • Coach a team member through the five questions of the Coaching Kata in a one-on-one
  • Gather performance insights from Gemba walks, peer feedback, and several dimensions so that no single metric drives a review

Module outline

How the time is spent

Each part ends with a short exercise, on your own work where you have it and on a prepared case where you do not. We adapt the examples and emphasis to the people in the room.

  1. Plan the capability the strategy needs

    Work out which skills the teams in scope need over the next one to three years and where the current gaps are.

    Put it into practice

    Map the skills one team needs against the skills it has, then sort each gap into hire, develop, or shared specialist support.

    Topics covered

    • Future product planning from vision, strategy, and market insights
    • Skills gap analysis at individual, team, and organizational level
    • Capability assessments for research, design, development, and process concepts
    • Succession planning for key roles
    • Over-specialization and other workforce planning anti-patterns

  2. Hire on evidence

    Treat hiring like product research, where observed work and specific past examples outweigh opinions and hypotheticals.

    Put it into practice

    Place each step of the hiring funnel for one open role on the ladder of evidence, then rewrite one hypothetical question as a behavioral one and name a bar raiser from outside the team who can veto the decision.

    Topics covered

    • Recruitment as a ladder of evidence
    • Behavioral interviews and red flags in candidate stories
    • Take-home assignments and trial periods with risk mitigation
    • Bar-raiser program with a veto on hiring decisions
    • Continuous sourcing, pre-boarding, structured onboarding, and peer mentors

  3. Develop judgment and review performance fairly

    Set up the career paths, coaching, and review inputs that grow senior judgment inside autonomous teams whose managers rarely see the daily work.

    Put it into practice

    Run the five questions of the Coaching Kata in pairs on a development goal of your own, five minutes each way, and note which question was hardest to ask without giving the answer.

    Topics covered

    • Four cognitive levels of work in the AI era
    • Radford performance levels with mastery sub-steps
    • Apprenticeship programs with learning agreements and exit criteria
    • Coaching Kata, one-on-ones, and continuous feedback
    • Gemba walks, peer feedback, Goodhart's Law, multi-level bonuses

Practical results

What the cohort leaves with

  • A skills gap analysis for the teams in scope, with each gap marked hire, coach, train, apprentice, or shared support
  • The hiring funnel for one role placed on the ladder of evidence, with one question rewritten as a behavioral one and a named bar raiser
  • Practice with the five Coaching Kata questions, and an apprenticeship learning agreement template to complete after the module
  • A list of changes to performance levels and review inputs so they describe judgment and draw on more than one source

Before the module

Bring the product strategy, the current roster with roles and levels for the teams in scope, and any open or planned roles. Leaders should agree beforehand who holds authority over hiring, job levels, and development budgets.

The company learning plan

Where this module fits

Part of the Product Teams courses, taken at the Lead the product teams stage of the implementation.

See all company courses →

Product Teams

Explore the supporting documentation