Over the past 21 years, I have worked with nearly 100 companies and helped launch well over 100 digital products. These companies have ranged from bootstrapped startups to Fortune 50 established giants. Regardless of size or age, the most successful teams had the following traits. The inverse is also true – the many failed or underwhelming products were produced by teams who lacked at least a couple of these traits.

There are many articles out there with “keys to success”, at a high level. My involvement with these teams has allowed me to see everything from business strategy and financials, to team relationships, to technical architecture and code. This deep perspective allows for a much greater understanding of where the hold ups were, and what generated success.

#7 Clear and Measurable Objectives

A successful product is not a matter of opinion. Successful teams have done the work to know exactly what they’re working towards, and always know why they’re doing it. Within their area of expertise, they know what success looks like and are measuring it.

Pivots can and often should happen. A common mistake is pivoting in a way that doesn’t align with what the customer actually needs. Instead, the pivot is based on internal demands. Aligning on objectives helps remind the team what they are doing and why they’re doing it. It’s the difference between movement and progress.

#6 Short Planning Cycles

With a few exceptions, successful teams do not spend very much time in planning. Those exceptions have been with founders who are toying with an idea while still working their day jobs.

And what do I mean by “short”? Every team that spent more than two months in planning either failed to ship or saw lackluster results. More than a few times, months of planning was thrown out and a new planning phase was started.

Some highly successful products spent as little as two weeks in planning.

It’s been mentioned that the iPhone took five years of planning. It didn’t. It took years to go from original idea to shipping, but that wasn’t all planning. Most of that time was ideation and iteration. Some of it was even taking time off to work on a different idea. Getting working code or products in real hands as fast as possible is much more likely to result in success.

#5 Broader Definition of “Product Team”

Destroy silos. Break down walls. Some of the greatest single contributions I have seen came from engineers. Far too often they’re not considered part of the “product team”. Frequently engineers know products better than product managers.

This doesn’t mean successful teams design or develop by committee (they don’t), but it does mean a key contributor from each functional area is continually up-to-speed and able to provide feedback. This can include key contributors from customer service or sales. Including them at the right time, with the right questions and in the right context is key. It’s also important to retain role clarity. Feedback can come from anywhere, but let the team do what they were hired for and what they’re best at.

#4 Tight Knit

Regardless of reporting structure, successful products have tight knit product teams. Those teams define themselves by a shared purpose. They are cross-functional teams. There are no cliques by functional area within a product team. A team event or dinner often consists of everyone on the product team, not just specific roles. Everyone on the team is aligned on the same “why”.

They have a mutual respect for other roles. Their language refers to “us” regardless of role – the team, not the title.

#3 Solid Skills

Even with scrappy startups, having solid skills is vital. Maybe it’s just a contractor for a week, but that clear guidance can save months or years of headaches. A key limiting belief system here is simply not knowing what you don’t know. For example, if you have never seen a skilled researcher in action, you don’t know what you’re missing.

The best product managers can easily add a zero or two to revenue. They can balance priorities that exponentially increase a team’s ability to grow and better solve customer problems.

For web-based products, full stack engineers will get you started, but won’t take you far. The most successful teams have specialists. I have seen a 10 person team with specialists move faster than a 50 person full stack engineering team, producing greater quality along the way. I have watched application engineers spend weeks and months to build what a frontend engineer can accomplish in hours or days. The most successful teams are able to get to market quickly, iterate and refine. A balance of skills is required to achieve that.

Working with an expert researcher is a thing of beauty. It takes a massive load off of others, and enables them to do their best work. Working hard is good. Working smarter is better. Researchers help you work smarter.

Truly great designers will far exceed your expectations, and in less time than others. I get it, many of us have seen some good designs, and it looks easy to do. It’s not. The most successful product teams have great designers, empower them, and leverage their abilities.

Depending on the product, there’s other roles too. UX writers are another underutilized asset. True SEO professionals will do more for you than five smart people trying to figure it out on their own.

#2 High Quality, but Not Perfect

The most successful teams keep design and technical debt to a minimum. (I hear some are able to keep it to zero, but I have never witnessed that myself.) What the products do, they do well. These teams choose concise and polished features sets instead of broad and mediocre. Design and engineering teams create products at a level of quality they are happy with.

They can always do better. Design, for example, is never truly done. Forward movement and progress is key. They do not redesign features simply because of fads or trends. They walk to their own beat and make their own impact. They don’t let perfection get in the way of success.

#1 Customer Centric

With only a few exceptions, every product and feature I have seen created came from teams who thought they were indeed “customer centric”, “customer obsessed” or otherwise focused on the customer.

Successful product teams think about the customer every step of the way. It is always paramount. Where many teams fall short is, along the way, they forget. They become focused on a date, a feature, a framework, “best practices”, positioning or any number of other steps along the way. They become focused on process, technical or other short-sighted rationale which ultimately signal a departure from solving the customer’s problems.

The most successful product teams are not just the ones who can quickly move past their own problems and retain focus on the customer’s problems, they are the ones who can avoid creating internal problems to begin with.