Ed Biden recently shared something that caught my attention: "Most product leaders have no idea if their teams are actually on track." He described the familiar pattern: leaders set the strategy, hire the people, kick off the work, and then hear... nothing until launch day.

That line hit because it is painfully common. And Ed's metaphor makes it hard to ignore. He compared it to "building a printer and never checking if the colours are aligned." If the output is wrong, you do not blame the documents. You do not yell at the printer. "You open up the machine and fix it." In other words, if outcomes are off, the answer is usually not more pressure on individuals. It is a better system.

In this post, I want to expand on what Ed is pointing at: a product operating model that creates just enough visibility and feedback loops to keep teams on track, without slipping into micromanagement or status theater.

The real problem: silence creates surprise

Ed's core claim is not that teams are lazy or leaders do not care. It is that many orgs run on a "launch day reveal" operating system. Work disappears into a sprint cadence, and leadership only re-engages when something is late, too expensive, or unpopular.

The cost of that silence is surprise. Surprise creates urgency. Urgency creates emotion. And emotion creates bad decision-making.

"Early feedback is cheap. Late feedback is expensive and emotional."

That is the practical heart of this. If you can build a rhythm that surfaces trajectory early, you can intervene when the cost is low and the options are many.

What a product operating model actually is (and is not)

Ed calls it "a rhythm of meetings, documents, and processes that tells you where teams are winning, and where they need you." I like that definition because it is explicitly about signal, not control.

A product operating model is:

A shared cadence: when decisions get made, when alignment happens, when you inspect progress.
A set of artifacts: short docs that make thinking visible (problem framing, solution approach, launch plan, results).
A set of decision points: moments where leadership support and tradeoffs are pulled forward.

A product operating model is not:

A weekly status meeting where everyone reads Jira tickets out loud.
A PM spending their life formatting slides to "look busy."
A leadership excuse to override teams late because they "just saw it."

If it is working, teams move faster with less rework, and leaders spend their time coaching, unblocking, and making high-leverage calls.

The four reviews Ed uses (and why they work)

Ed shared an operating model with four key reviews. On the surface, it is simple. Underneath, it is a structured way to reduce rework by pulling feedback earlier in the cycle.

1) Kick Off: align on the problem before building anything

Ed's Kick Off is about agreeing on scope with stakeholders before anyone starts work and getting alignment on "the problem, success criteria, and constraints."

This is where you prevent the classic failure mode: a team builds the right solution to the wrong problem.

What I would include in a strong Kick Off:

Problem statement: what user or business pain are we solving?
Success criteria: what measurable change do we expect?
Non-goals: what are we explicitly not doing?
Constraints: timelines, platform limits, legal/privacy boundaries.
Decision owner: who breaks ties when tradeoffs show up?

If you only do one thing, do this: write down what "success" means in plain language, then attach numbers.

2) Solution Review: the cheapest intervention point

Ed calls Solution Review the place to "review the plan before coding starts" and catch "flawed logic, missed edge cases, and scope creep." He also says it is the "cheapest intervention point in the entire cycle."

This is where many teams are weakest because it is less tangible than code. But it is also where you can save weeks.

A good Solution Review is not a design critique meeting that devolves into opinions. It is a decision-quality review:

Do we understand the user journey end-to-end?
What are the edge cases (permissions, empty states, failure modes)?
What will we measure and how will we instrument it?
What did we intentionally cut, and what risk does that create?
Are we sure this is the smallest useful version?

Ed's example is spot on: feedback after three weeks of coding often means a rebuild. Feedback at solution stage often means a diagram change.

3) Launch Readiness: operational excellence makes product feel "easy"

Ed lists comms, documentation, monitoring, and a rollback plan. This is the difference between "we shipped" and "users successfully adopted it."

Launch Readiness is where product, engineering, support, marketing, and data meet reality together.

A practical Launch Readiness checklist might include:

Release plan: phased rollout, feature flags, eligibility rules.
Monitoring: dashboards, alerts, error budgets, on-call expectations.
Support readiness: macros, known issues, escalation paths.
Comms: internal enablement plus user-facing messaging if needed.
Rollback: what triggers a rollback, and who is authorized?

I have seen great features fail simply because no one planned the first 72 hours after release.

4) Impact Review: learn in public and improve the system

Ed suggests sharing learnings 30-90 days after launch: "Did it work? What did you learn? What would you do differently?"

This is the review most teams skip, and it is the one that compounds. Without it, you keep repeating the same mistakes and you never build trust with stakeholders.

Impact Reviews also protect teams. If a bet did not work, you can show the logic, the data, and the learning. That is healthier than blame.

The three requirements Ed highlights (and how to make them real)

Ed says for this system to work, you need three things. I agree, and I think each can be made concrete.

Clear definition of success

Without this, you cannot measure performance. The trap is choosing metrics that are either too high-level ("engagement") or too local ("we shipped").

A useful pattern:

Outcome metric (what changed for users or the business?)
Guardrail metrics (what must not get worse?)
Adoption metric (did the intended audience actually use it?)

Indicators that show trajectory early

These are leading indicators that predict whether the work is headed toward success.

Examples:

Before launch: prototype test results, pricing page click-through, time-to-first-value in a beta.
After launch (early): activation rate, drop-off at step 2, support ticket themes.

If you only look at quarterly outcomes, you will discover problems when it is too late to fix them cheaply.

Ability to intervene effectively

This is where leadership earns their keep. Intervention should not mean rewriting the roadmap mid-sprint. It should mean:

Coaching: clarify principles, tradeoffs, or decision criteria.
Unblocking: remove dependencies, escalate decisions, secure resources.
Providing context: connect the work to strategy so teams can make better calls.

"The goal isn't control. It's clarity."

A lightweight cadence you can copy

If you want to implement Ed's approach without creating bureaucracy, keep the artifacts short and the calendar predictable.

Kick Off (30-45 min): one page problem brief.
Solution Review (45-60 min): architecture + UX flow + measurement plan.
Launch Readiness (30-45 min): checklist and owner list.
Impact Review (45 min): results, learnings, next actions.

The trick is consistency. The goal is that everyone knows: "This is when we align, this is when we decide, this is when we learn."

And remember Ed's printer: you are not judging the output once at the end. You are aligning the colors as you go.

What this changes for product leaders

When you have this rhythm, leadership stops being a last-minute escalation desk and becomes a force multiplier.

You can spend time where it actually matters:

Preventing rework instead of reacting to it
Helping teams make better decisions earlier
Reinforcing what "good" looks like across the org

As Ed put it, you can "coach, unblock, and stretch them toward their best work." And Julie Zhuo captured the point well: "Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together." - Julie Zhuo

This blog post expands on a viral LinkedIn post by Ed Biden, Super practical product management and AI training. View the original LinkedIn post →