What is a Product Council?
A product council is a recurring meeting of senior product, engineering, and design leaders who make decisions that span multiple teams. These decisions include: how to allocate engineering capacity across product areas, which strategic bets to pursue, how to resolve conflicting priorities between teams, and when to kill or double-down on initiatives.
Individual PMs own their team's roadmap. The product council owns the portfolio-level decisions that no single PM can make.
Why Product Councils Matter
Without a product council, portfolio-level decisions happen through politics or inertia. The loudest PM gets the most resources. The most politically connected team gets the most engineers. The product council provides a structured forum for making these decisions based on strategy and evidence.
Product councils also create alignment. When five teams are working on different parts of the same product, someone needs to ensure they are heading in the same direction. The council provides that coordination.
How to Run a Product Council
Set a clear agenda. Common topics include: quarterly roadmap reviews, resource reallocation requests, cross-team dependency resolution, new initiative proposals, and kill decisions for underperforming bets.
Require data for every decision. PMs presenting to the council should bring usage metrics, customer feedback, and business impact projections. Opinions are welcome; data is required.
Make decisions and record them. The council must produce clear outcomes: approved, rejected, needs more data, or revisit next session. Document decisions and share with the broader team.
Limit attendance. A council with 15 people is a status meeting, not a decision-making body. Keep it to 5-8 senior leaders who can actually commit resources.
Product Councils in Practice
At Spotify, product councils operate at the tribe level. Each tribe's leadership team meets bi-weekly to review squad roadmaps, resolve conflicts between squads, and make investment decisions about new product bets.
Microsoft's product councils for major products like Teams and Office review strategic themes quarterly and make resource allocation decisions that shape each team's roadmap for the following quarter.
Common Pitfalls
- No decision authority. If the council discusses but never decides, it is a waste of time. Give it real power to allocate resources and set priorities.
- Too operational. The council should discuss strategy and portfolio decisions, not review sprint progress or debug feature details.
- Missing key voices. Engineering and design leadership must be present. Product-only councils miss critical feasibility and design input.
- Infrequent meetings. Monthly is fine for strategy, but blockers and conflicts need faster resolution. Consider an async escalation channel between meetings.
Related Concepts
Product councils implement product strategy at the portfolio level and feed decisions into team-level roadmaps. They connect to stakeholder management and product ops. The CPO typically chairs the council.