Product at a Distance: Innovation in the Era of Distributed Teams

The missing playbook for envisioning and building great products, regardless of where your team sits.

Every product team needs a destination before it needs directions. When teams are distributed across time zones and continents, agreeing on that destination-and keeping everyone navigating toward it-is where most organizations miss the mark.

Product at a Distance is the GPS modern distributed product teams have been missing. Built on three decades of leadership from startups to Silicon Valley giants like Intuit, SurveyMonkey, frog design, and Tonic Health, Dave Scott addresses one of the most underserved challenges in modern product management. At the core of the book is the Product House: a complete framework running from company vision through execution and organizational design, with "Distance Adaptations" built into every step.

The book is organized into three parts:

• Decide - How to set a compelling product north star, build winning strategies, and create a roadmap your entire organization can execute against
• Build - How to run research, drive innovation, and shepherd ideas from opportunity definition to shipped product, whether your teams are across the hall or across the world
• Operate - How to build, lead, and scale a distributed product organization for the long haul

Through collaborative workshops and artifact-driven processes, Product at a Distance gives distributed product teams everything they need to build the right things, the right way, and all without being in the same room. Essential reading for product managers, designers, UX researchers, and the executives who lead them-especially those navigating the realities of globally distributed teams.

Engineering teams got a wave of serious literature on offshore development twenty years ago. Product teams have been waiting. This is that book.