What is Product Council?
A recurring leadership forum where the heads of product, design, engineering, and key business stakeholders make portfolio-level trade-offs.
A product council operates above the squad level, it's where the company decides what gets the next dollar, the next hire, the next quarter of attention. The council needs three things to work: a shared scoring model so debates are evidence-based, a regular cadence (monthly is standard), and the authority to actually kill work. Without those, the council becomes a status meeting and prioritization defaults back to whichever VP has the loudest voice in the all-hands.
Related terms
Product Portfolio Management
The discipline of allocating investment, capacity, and attention across multiple product lines or initiatives to maximize strategic impact.
Product Operating Model
The system of teams, decision rights, rituals, and tools that determines how a product organization actually works.
Quarterly Business Review (QBR)
The quarterly leadership ritual that re-grounds product strategy, reviews portfolio performance, and resets bets for the next 90 days.
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