Running Product at Brex

A fun (and efficient) meeting for running your product organization.

Zach Abrams

When I first joined Brex, we had three Product Managers (PMs) and no real process for coordinating across the team. We've since grown by several multiples and manage many distinct, but at times overlapping, product areas. It's critical that we (1) spend time together every week to build our organization and it's unique culture, align on top priorities for the week, and ensure we're all working together; and (2) have a clear source of truth for all product documents and decisions. Our product team now meets both objectives—with this Coda doc.

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`Team weekly`⁠
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Every Monday, our entire product team meets for one hour, with three goals:

Build team culture. We ask every team member to write a "

Word of the week⁠

" and "win from last week." Oftentimes these snapshots are quite creative and humorous; they let us learn a little more about our teammates each week. We devote the next ten minutes to individual updates, ensuring that everyone has a voice early in the meeting.

Track progress toward key objectives. We use

Open action items⁠

to track progress against internal team goals, the

Launch calendar⁠

to quickly review upcoming launches, and

Performance⁠

to keep an eye on high-level key goals. Each page is updated before the meeting. Ideally we only discuss open questions or issues.

Discuss and align. The bulk of the meeting is focused on

Discussion topics⁠

. Everyone writes updates, questions, and topics in this page. We spend roughly five minutes reading during the meeting and 15-20 minutes discussing specific topics.

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`Team library`⁠
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Product team docs sprawl. They take on a life of their own. Bringing them all together, in one place, is vital to the team’s success.

We keep anything that might be interesting or helpful across the team in our library. The collection ranges from team mandates to product articles. Three specific audiences will find this set of pages useful:

Existing PMs: We have one place to look for any key document.

New team members: After taking a few days to read through our library, teammates should have enough context to participate in most meetings.

Cross-functional partners: Colleagues should know exactly where to go to find product specs or team roadmaps.

The themes and principals details above have evolved naturally over the last 6 months, and they have been increasingly facilitated and memorialized via Coda. Our weekly team meeting works really well for us, but probably isn't perfect for every team. Use this doc as a starting point for creating something uniquely valuable for your team. I hope this helps 🙏

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👉 Get started:
`Word of the week`⁠
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Running Product at Brex

⁠Team weekly⁠⁠

⁠Team library⁠⁠

👉 Get started: Word of the week⁠⁠

⁠
`Team weekly`⁠
⁠

⁠
`Team library`⁠
⁠

👉 Get started:
`Word of the week`⁠
⁠