Create aug21-2025-workshop-notes

Notes from the business and product strategy group's workshop on Aug 21, 2025.

Author: timfrick

business-product/aug21-2025-workshop-notes

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+# Biz/Product Strategy Workshop Notes
+
+The business & product strategy task force met on Tuesday September 19, 2025 to discuss notes created on a Miro board about how to split product vs. business guidelines in ways that would be meaningful to the WSGs, understanding the following:
+
+- The primary role of the business guidelines is to help organizational leaders support product teams and bridge the gap between what an organization might be doing to advance sustainability versus strategies and practices product teams might be engaged in.
+
+- The primary role of the product guidelines is to help product teams incorporate sustainability practices into product management, acknowledging that there could be overlap with UX and other guidelines depending on how an organization organizes its product team.
+
+
+## Objective
+
+With only an hour, the group spent most of its time identifying whether existing guidelines should live in a business strategy section, a product strategy section, or how they might be relevant to both. For the latter, 
+
+- Some warrant further discussion for clarity,
+
+- Some should be split with clarity on how a similar guideline is relevant to an organization vs. a product,
+
+- We should consider better cross-referencing overlaps not only between product and business guidelines but also between others, like UX or hosting.
+
+\
+
+
+
+## Primary Take-Aways
+
+- Business strategy guidelines should support product guidelines.
+
+- There’s not always agreement about where a guideline should live. Attendees made compelling cases to include individual guidelines in one category or another, often while discussing the same guideline. 
+
+- For these, we should consider splitting an individual guideline into two separate guidelines with specific success criteria that’s relevant to the category it lives in.
+
+- Tzviya suggested we might consider organizing the guidelines by what’s relevant to product, system, or organizational sustainability. 
+
+- In all cases, we should cross reference whenever possible. 
+
+We also didn’t get a chance to discuss other dShould business guidelines drive a maturity model? If so, what are the ramifications of moving them out of the spec?
+
+angling questions that still need to be addressed:
+
+- Are product guidelines specific to product managers? What about UX overlap?
+
+- What is missing from either set of guidelines?
+
+- Need to create new intros for each that clearly describe:
+
+  - Who the guidelines are for
+
+  - What is the context for sustainability?
+
+  - How they should be prioritized and measured
+
+  - Acknowledge that every organization designs teams differently so these guidelines may not reflect your use case
+
+The group agreed that we should schedule another meeting (possibly more than an hour?) as soon as possible, hopefully in September. 
+
+
+## Business Guidelines
+
+The following recommendations were discussed during this meeting:
+
+
+### 5.1 - Ethical and sustainable product strategy
+
+**Notes:** Chris Adams made apt comparisons to accessibility statements, which tend to be product or website-specific. This could potentially be challenging for sustainability since its implications are so broad. Brief discussions were had about where this should live to standardize (possibly using structured data), ie. [domain.com/sustainability](http://domain.com/sustainability) 
+
+**Recommendation:** Include a version of this guideline in both product and business; clearly differentiate between organizational policy and a ‘sustainability statement’ versus specific sustainability criteria in product strategy that guides product development.
+
+
+### 5.2. - Assign a sustainability representative
+
+**Notes:** Acknowledging that individual organizations structure sustainability teams in different ways, it has already been discussed that representative might not be the best word. Champion is another suggestion. The core point is to assign ownership to sustainability criteria, preferably across disciplines so that sustainability is not siloed within an organization (and runs the risk of getting choked off due to reduced resources for that team or department should organizational circumstances change). 
+
+**Recommendation:** To create multidisciplinary ownership of sustainability, this should live in business guidelines. There are opportunities to improve success criteria to better suit the rationale in the comments above, for example in cross-training, co-creation, and so on.
+
+
+### 5.19 - Use Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (JEDI) practices
+
+**Notes:** JEDI tends to be a very US-specific term. Also, DEI efforts within organizations look very different depending on where an organization is based, its size, etc. Plus, justice implies legislation which is not for W3C to decide, given its mission. The core point of this guideline is to ensure organizations and teams incorporate the perspectives of those they hope to serve, including user base, community stakeholders, lived experiences, and so on. However, this could potentially lead to unintended consequences or non-equitable solutions if the organization neglects to include an impacted group’s perspective. 
+
+Also, studies exist showing how organizations that incorporate diverse perspectives and lived experiences into business and product strategy not only create better products/services but can also outperform their more traditional counterparts as well. It’s worth considering how this might impact the guideline’s success criteria. 
+
+**Recommendation:** Keep in business guidelines but remove JEDI-specific terminology and rewrite the guideline to meet above criteria. 
+
+NOTE: a rewrite with above criteria could mean this guideline overlaps significantly with several in the UX Design category. If so, the rewritten guideline should be explicit about how it applies to organizational strategy that empowers product teams.
+
+
+### 5.23 - Include responsible financial policies
+
+**Notes:** While it was collectively agreed upon that this should live in business guidelines, the group didn’t have enough time to deeply explore this guideline. Questions that arose: 
+
+- How do we define ‘responsible’?
+
+- What financial policies will best support teams creating web-based products?  
+
+- Does this include procurement or is that already covered clearly in 5.16 on supplier codes of conduct? 
+
+- Similarly, how might this overlap with other existing guidelines such as philanthropic practices, business continuity, and so on?
+
+While most would agree that keeping an organization solvent and not making risky financial decisions is in the best interest of everyone, a certain amount of business risk is inevitable and usually case-specific. How do we create meaningful guidance for business leaders to support sustainable decision-making and thriving product teams in this guideline?
+
+**Recommendation:** Dedicate some time specifically to updating this guideline to answer the questions above. Decide on the role of procurement, philanthropy, business continuity, etc. in this guideline. Include clear examples in the public domain as part of success criteria. 
+
+
+### 5.28 - Use open source where possible
+
+**Notes:** This guideline could be relevant to both product and business. However, business leaders are typically tasked with allocating resources, especially when it comes to contributing to open source projects. Product leaders are typically tasked with day-to-day implementation. Attendees acknowledged the challenges inherent to this. 
+
+**Recommendation:** Write a clear sentence on why this is important from a sustainability perspective. Consider changing ‘use’ to ‘contribute’ in this guideline. Acknowledge resource allocation and reference overlap with product guidelines. 
+
+NOTE: New proposed UK buying standard could be a model to reference as it specifically mentions budgeting for contributing back. 
+
+
+### 5.6, 5.8, 5.9, 5.10, 5.16, 5.17, 5.18, 5.21, 5.22, 5.24, 5.25, 5.26, 5.29
+
+The group did not discuss any of these guidelines in the existing business strategy category. However, it was noted that 5.21, 5.22, 5.25, and 5.29 could also live comfortably within product guidelines.
+
+Perhaps these can be covered in the next meeting? 
+
+
+### Two new guidelines
+
+Finally, two new guidelines were suggested on the Miro board:
+
+- 5.30 Procurement policies must include sustainability requirements
+
+- 5.31 Procurement oversight must align with sustainability governance
+
+As responsible procurement plays such an important role in addressing Scope 3 emissions and how organizations externalize social and environmental problems, the group should prioritize this topic in all guidelines.
+
+
+## Product Guidelines
+
+### 5.1 - Ethical and sustainable product strategy
+
+**Notes:** Provide clarity on the scope of this strategy for product teams. 
+
+**Recommendation:** Include a version of this in both product and business guidelines; clearly differentiate between organizational policy and a public-facing ‘sustainability statement’ versus specific sustainability criteria used in product strategy.
+
+
+### 5.4 Communicate the ecological impact of user choices
+
+**Notes:** Attendees acknowledged a big overlap with UX Design in this guideline. They also noted the importance of communicating this to clients or business leaders, presumably in early discovery, ideation, or roadmapping sessions to set expectations at the outset of a project. 
+
+**Recommendation:** If there is a difference between product strategy and UX design for this guideline, be more explicit about how. Otherwise, be sure to cross reference with 2.4, 2.8, 2.22, 2.24, or others.
+
+
+### 5.5 - Estimate a product or service’s environmental impact
+
+**Notes:** Attendees suggested connecting this to user journey mapping (2.6, 2.22, etc.) in UX Design. Also suggested being explicit about both human and non-human actors (maybe there’s a better word than ‘actors’?). Also, there is an opportunity to cross reference this guideline with 5.15, 5.25, 5.27, as well as 2.1, 2.3, 2.6,  2.21, or others in UX Design).
+
+**Recommendation:** Either rewrite the guideline so there is not so much overlap with others or better integrate the overlaps so guidance on what to do is clear regardless of role. 
+
+
+### 5.7 - Verify efforts using established third-party certifications
+
+**Notes:** A rousing discussion occurred regarding product vs. business certifications and the role of each. Business certifications provide public, third-party verification of a company’s sustainability efforts, which can help with greenwashing, compliance, communications, and reducing risk. Product certifications can help with the same things but are specific to products. A best case scenario would be for a company to have both. 
+
+NOTE: GSF is exploring [SCI disclosure certification](https://greensoftware.foundation/articles/establishing-software-carbon-transparency-why-we-re-exploring-sci-disclosure-cert), which would be specific to products.
+
+**Recommendation:** Create separate guidelines in each category with different success criteria to be explicit about the benefits provided by product vs. business certifications. 
+
+
+### 5.11 - Product management and maintenance strategy
+
+**Notes:** Everyone agreed this should be in product.
+
+**Recommendation:** With exception of a specific mention of carbon in a single success criteria, this guideline could stand to be more explicit about sustainability benefits. Consider updating/rewriting.
+
+
+### 5.12 - Implement continuous improvement procedures
+
+**Notes:** Continuous improvement should be a core component of product management. Possible opportunity to merge with 5.11. A mention that because it often involves hard costs, whether from a third-party provider or internal, resource allocation for continuous improvement might be the remit of business leaders in many organizations. However, as with other guidelines noted above, day to day implementation is likely within the realm of product teams.
+
+**Recommendation:** Consider merging with 5.11 unless there is a clear reason not to. 
+
+
+### 5.15 - Conduct a full life cycle assessment
+
+**Notes:** Potential budget approvals might be in business, but this should be a product guideline. Potential opportunity to cross-reference with product certifications.
+
+**Recommendation:** As digital life cycle assessments are emergent, mostly hardware-based, and not very common for web-based products, be more explicit about the role they play in digital product management. Current intent under the guideline is shortsighted and the example isn’t from the web. Also consider including more info about how LCA process—extraction, manufacturing, distribution, use, end of life—applies specifically to software. 
+
+
+### 5.13, 5.27
+
+These were not discussed during our meeting and should be carefully considered for the next meeting.
+
+
+## Hybrid or Split Guidelines
+
+These guidelines in the Crossover category of the whiteboard were left there for various reasons outlined below.
+
+
+### 5.3 - Inform, raise awareness, and train for sustainability
+
+**Notes:** This guideline warrants further discussion, as there wasn’t consensus on where it should live or who the training or awareness raising should apply to. 
+
+**Recommendation:** Devote time in the next meeting to work through this guideline in more detail.
+
+
+### 5.14 - Establish is a digital product or service is necessary
+
+**Notes:** There was little consensus to whether this should live in product or business or both. It was noted that no product manager would knowingly put themselves out of a job by stating that their product shouldn’t exist. It was also noted that product ideas can come from anywhere within the organization, but that approval to pursue typically comes from business leadership.
+
+Also, not sure why SDG alignment is included here in SCs? Can a meaningful product be feasible, desirable, viable, etc. yet not fall into one of the SDG categories? Also, whether a product or service has competitors is often key to how one provides value over another. It can be a driver for innovation. 
+
+**Recommendation:** Revisit the success criteria for this guideline and identify whether it should live in one or both categories at an upcoming meeting.
+
+
+### 5.20 - Promote responsible data practices
+
+**Notes:** Similar lack of consensus on where this should live. It was noted that compliance could be a business thing since it presents potential risks to the organization (CSRD, GDPR, etc.). It was also noted that organizational data governance usually leads to product team implementation, a common theme in our discussion.
+
+**Recommendation:** Link this guideline to W3C’s Privacy Principles. Explore how to be more explicit about roles and practices, which could lead to splitting this guideline between product and business with references to the other categories since good data governance is inherent to all categories.
+
+
+### New Draft Biz Strategy Intro (to use in new business guidelines)
+
+Organizational leaders drive strategy and set the tone for workplace culture. They often approve resources for sustainability projects, greatly influencing whether sustainability is ingrained throughout the organization, an afterthought, or even considered at all. “Culture eats policy for breakfast”, and leadership plays a critical role in defining what is acceptable behavior. 
+
+They also face pressure from investors, competitors, regulators, and others to improve performance, boost efficiency, and reduce overhead, often in the name of exponential growth. This can cause companies to externalize costs while simultaneously privatizing profits. In doing so, they run the risk of creating negative social and environmental impacts associated with their operations.
+
+For these reasons, the Business Strategy Guidelines aim to help organizational leaders:
+
+- Incorporate sustainability principles into operational policies and procedures related to the web,
+
+- Empower product teams to integrate sustainability with design and development processes,
+
+- Support strong social and economic foundations that society needs to function while operating within planetary boundaries.
+
+_^^^ Alexander Dawson has noted that a list of sustainability benefits would be really useful to include here._ 
+
+
+### New Draft Product Strategy Intro (to use in product guidelines)
+
+Draft needed, possibly François to write?