Airtable

product
insights
report

1 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Table of contents

3 Introduction
Getting back to the bigger picture

4 Who we surveyed
A closer look at the audience

5 Insight 1
The big picture isn’t easy for most teams to see

8 Insight 2
Autonomy drives impact

11 Insight 3
Teams have processes in place—but they aren’t working

14 Insight 4
Measurement methods are a mixed bag (and so are results)

17 Insight 5
Our tools need to pull more weight

20 Conclusion

21 Methodology

2 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Introduction

Getting back to
the bigger picture
A product team’s job is to think about the big So when less than half of your team understands
picture: the needs of your customers, and the the product vision in full, what’s the real cost to your

innovations that can push your org into the organization, and your customers? And more importantly:
how do you clear the weeds so your team can
next chapter of growth.
stay focused?

But that big picture can be elusive. And In this survey of over 700 product professionals, we took
before you can deliver what’s best for your a closer look at the habits of product teams. Read on to
customers, you need your whole team learn what motivates teams like yours, what keeps them
aligned behind a clear, data-backed vision. aligned, and what’s holding them back—and how people,
process, and tech influence your impact on customers
and the business.

A peek at the findings

• 58% of product team members don’t have a strong
understanding of their company’s product vision

• Low individual autonomy is correlated with low

team-level engagement—but only 30% of product
team members say they have “high autonomy”
in determining how to do their work

• 90% of product teams find at least one stage of

the product lifecycle highly challenging to execute,
even though 81% have processes in place for
5 or more stages

3 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Who we surveyed

A closer look
at the audience
For our inaugural product trends report, Each respondent was a part of a product team, and
we drew insights from product professionals employed full-time at a 1,000+ employee company.

across the United States. Respondents worked on a mix of B2B and B2C
products, and a mix of physical and digital products

We worked with Lawless Research to survey over across a wide range of company sizes and role levels.

700 product professionals in the United States—from We asked questions about their team, the tech they use,

individual contributors up through C-level executives. the processes they implement, and the impact they
have on the business to form the insights in this report.

Primary market Job level or role Industry

B2B 8% Associate Coordinator or Team Member 16% Manufacturing 21%

B 2C 6% Administrator or Lead 1(% Retail and eCommerce 12%

B oth B 2 B and B 2C 86% Individual Contributor / Professional 1(% Consumer Goods and Services 11%

Suôervisor 17% Consumer Technology 11%

Company size (by FTEs)

Manager 1(% Technology (Software) 9%

1,000 to 4,999 53% Senior Manager 9% Financial Services and Insurance 7%

5,000 to 9,999 3(% Director 13% Healthcare and Life Sciences 5%

10,000 to 24,999 1(% VP 7% Professional and Technical Services 5%

25,000+ 6% C - level or E xecutive 8% Automotive 4%

Utilities and Energy 3%

Technology (Hardware) 3%

Education 2%

Media , Entertainment and Publishing 2%

Telecommunications Services 2%

Travel and Hosôitality 2%

Transôortation 1%

4 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Insight 1

The big picture isn’t easy

for most teams to see
As a product team, rallying around your product vision is But most product teams aren’t seeing the big picture
about more than setting lofty goals. It’s the heart of what as clearly as they might like. Few product teams
a product team does: a charter that defines the problem fully understand the vision they’re chasing—and that
you’re solving, the people you’re solving it for, and the disconnect only amplifies as companies scale.
reason you’re solving it.

5 Airtable Airtable product insights report

The product vision gets blurrier A few contributing reasons:
as a company scales
Information isn’t moving smoothly across the
Across the board, fewer than half of product team product org.
members feel strongly that they understand the Only 24% of product team members find it “very easy”
long-term vision of the product they’re working on. to access information they need to do their job from
self-serve tools and resources. Even if they’re not directly
That’s even more pronounced as a company scales.
seeking information on the product vision to do their
At companies with 10,000+ employees, only about
work, those gaps in context could impact their ability
a third of product team members “strongly agree”
to tie their work to broader goals and strategy.
that they understand the long-term product vision.
Visibility into high-level objectives and goals
isn’t consistent.
Only 53% of product team members say they have “high
visibility” into team-wide goals and objectives. In other
words: the other half of product team members have
only partial visibility into the goals and objectives they’re
driving toward. Without that insight, it’s challenging for
product team members to understand the high-level
strategy behind their work.

6 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Take action: Prioritize creating and As you scale, building out highly accessible sources
socializing a single source of truth of truth can keep your team aligned—especially when

for broader, better alignment. it comes to the details about your company strategy, like
your objectives and goals. Use them to consolidate, and
Alignment is tricky for any team, but it’s especially then widely share information like goals and objectives to
difficult for large and growing teams. Without an help your team understand the “why” behind their work.
established “source of truth” in place for objectives and
goals, for example, it’s easy for sub-teams to create their
own silos of information. That, in turn, can inadvertently
impede visibility across the entire product team.

Spotlight story: Intuit That’s when they created “International Truth”: an Airtable
base with the goal of consolidating global research and
49% of teams surveyed say that user research influences insights, standardizing the teams’ process, and allowing
roadmap prioritization and decision-making “a great deal.” team members around the world to leverage the same
And when Adela-Lia Muresan joined Intuit, their team templates, research nuggets, and best practices.
had a wealth of previous research insights—but no way
to reliably find them. Individual designers used different Read more
processes, leading to silos, duplication of research, and
difficulty measuring the impact of their efforts.

Intuit

7 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Insight 2

Autonomy
drives impact
Autonomy’s ability to motivate teams is well-researched,
and well-publicized. As it turns out, it also has a tangible
“You need to approach everyone within
impact on the way product teams run.
your organization with the assumption
First and foremost, it means people can spend more
that they ultimately want to do the right
time on their work, and less time interpreting directives.
thing, and that’s where they’re coming
But it also has downstream impacts: teams with less
independence are less engaged at work. from...You share the same objective.”

And lower engagement has an outsized impact on Brian Bhuta

performance: it’s a drag on alignment, and slows down CPO, Forsta
—previously Signify Health, Dell EMC
ship times. So keeping folks interested in their work isn’t
Source
just good for your team—it’s good for your customers
and the business, too.

8 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Independence propels engagement,
engagement propels performance
“You need to create space, empower
Product leaders have their work cut out for them: less others and let go...It’s a balance between
than a third of product team members say they have creating enough autonomy while
high autonomy—or, a sense of freedom and control over ensuring the product is cohesive and
how they do their work. That, in turn, makes them less surprises are avoided.”
interested in the work itself. Teams with low autonomy
are significantly less engaged at work. Nikhyl Singhal
VP of Product, Facebook
Unsurprisingly, increasing autonomy can have a huge —previously Credit Karma, Google
positive impact. By giving folks more freedom in how Source

they do their work, you increase their interest in the work.

And engaged teams are 5x more likely to understand
the long-term vision, and 8x more likely to ship products
on time.

That trend is magnified for individual contributors,

who are 17x more likely to ship products on time when
they’re engaged.

High level of engagement by autonomy level

Degree of autonomy

Very low to slighly low 13%

Slightly high 12%

Moderatley high 31%

Very high 64%

Likelihood to ship on time by autonomy level

Degree of autonomy

Very low to slighly low 15%

Slightly high 14%

Moderatley high 24%

Very high 45%

9 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Take action: Create a sense of independence To raise engagement, leaders need to build an
without sacrificing structure or visibility. organizational structure that empowers individuals,
but doesn’t sacrifice org-wide consistency. Start by
Our data shows that autonomy has a positive influence building global alignment and structure around team-wide
on engagement. It also shows that teams with high processes, creating high visibility around information
autonomy, but fewer documented processes, are less like OKRs, feature tracking, milestones, and the like.
likely to meet their goals. It’s important to give teams Then, focus on enabling those at the edges of your
flexibility in how they work without losing a sense of organization—your individual contributors—to work
structure. independently on the day-to-day within the org-wide

Spotlight story: Hearst Magazines When they built a centralized publishing system,
they were able to build a structured source of truth
In 2017, Hearst Magazines brought all of its product that gave their whole team the insight and freedom
teams under one umbrella: combining operations from they needed to move quickly, better understand their
several teams, managing a total of 25 powerful brands products, and be more proactive about where the
and 245 websites. While the product team was combining marketplace was headed.
operations, they were also streamlining processes across
their web properties to improve publishing speed Read more
and efficiency.

Hearst Magazines

10 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Insight 3

Teams have processes in

place—but they aren’t working
Many teams realize the pivotal role of product operations:
almost half have a dedicated product operations team
“Strengthening cross-functional teams,
to manage and uplevel the product development lifecycle.
processes, and foundation isn’t sexy,
And the majority have processes built out to support
every stage of that cycle. but it’s key to innovation.”

The hangup is in the effectiveness of those processes. Nikhyl Singhal

Even though most teams have built processes to guide VP of Product, Facebook
—previously Credit Karma, Google
the various stages of the product lifecycle—like feedback Source
collection or feature prioritization—most still struggle
with at least one stage.

For leaders, that means having processes in place isn’t

enough—they also need to validate that those processes
are performing as intended.

81% 49% 90%

of teams have a documented of teams have a dedicated of teams still Fnd at least one
process for  stages of the product operations function stage of the product development
product development lifecycle lifecycle highly challenging

11 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Processes need to pull more weight

The product development lifecycle can be broken

down into a handful of distinct stages—and the majority
of teams have a process or workflow for addressing
each and every one of them:

On the surface, that’s a net positive: it means that most But if you’re still struggling: you’re not alone. Most teams
teams are investing in product operations throughout said they struggled with at least one stage. Managing
the product development lifecycle. product launches, collecting and analyzing feedback,
and analyzing progress topped the list. Only 10% said
they found none of the stages “highly challenging”
to tackle.

Processes that are highly challenging vs. whether they are documented
Highly challenging Use a documented process
Managing product launches 41% 67%

Analyzing and reporting on results / progress 39% 74%

Collecting and analyzing product and customer feedback 39% 77%

Managing product build and delivery 3k% 73%

Managing product roadmaps 3k% 7y%

Prioritizing product features and capabilities 36% 73%

Setting and aligning on team objectives 36% 67%

Conducting user research 34% 69%

None of the above 10%

12 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Take action: Audit your processes • Where are your bottlenecks? Are folks struggling
to identify blocks. to find the information they need? Is cross-functional
collaboration clunky or manual?
If you’ve already got processes in place for each stage
• Are the tools and software in place helping my
of the product lifecycle, take this as an opportunity
processes run efficiently and effectively? Or are
to step back and reevaluate. Start with questions like:
they falling short?
• Where is your team still struggling? Which stages
of your cycle need streamlining most?

• How do your stakeholders (internal and external to

your team) feel about your processes? Where do you
need to build stronger feedback loops to verify that
things are working as intended?

Spotlight: Rethinking the rules of the roadmap

(and the processes behind it)
Good product development happens when an entire
organization works together, combining each team’s
skills with deep customer feedback to create a product
bigger than the sum of its parts. But that’s far easier said
than done.

This ebook unpacks best practices for planning,

measuring, and prioritizing: from centralizing feedback
to creating accessible roadmap resources for your org.
It also takes a closer look at how Airtable runs product
operations—and a tactical guide for borrowing their
processes for your own team.

Learn more

13 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Insight 4

Measurement methods are

a mixed bag (and so are results)
As the saying goes: “if you can’t measure it, you can’t
manage it.”
“Quite simply, it’s the product manager’s
And for product teams, there’s no universal way to job to articulate two simple things: What
measure progress. From monthly or daily active users to game are we playing? [And] how do we
market position from third-party ratings, teams reported
keep score?”
an eclectic mix of key performance indicators (KPIs).

Their ability to hit those KPIs, though, was consistently Adam Nash
CEO, Daffy
inconsistent.
—previously Dropbox, Wealthfront, LinkedIn
Source

47% 29%

of teams are measured against of teams :almost always2 hit their

monthly or daily active users—the goals and objectives, compared
most used
 among product to ('& of teams that almost
teams (tied with CSAT) never, or sometimes hit their goals

14 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Measured, but not necessarily managed Based on the data, the product teams that are most
likely to hit their goals:
So how are product teams measuring impact? The most
• Have higher autonomy
popular metric of success: monthly or daily active users,
which 47% of product teams measure against. Customer • Have better visibility into performance metrics
satisfaction score (CSAT), monthly or annual recurring and progress toward goals
revenue, users per feature, and conversion rate round
• Have a better understanding of the long-term vision
out a top 5.
of the product
And when it comes to performance, most teams have
• Feel strongly that they have the tools they need
mixed results. Only 29% of teams say they almost always
to ship on time
hit their objectives and goals. And only 1 in 4 say they
almost always ship on time. • Find it easy to access the information they need
to do their work across tools

Most common performance metrics

Monthly or daily active users 47%

Custoer satisfaction score (CSAT) 47%

Monthly or annually recurring revenue 4D%

Users per feature 44%

Conversion rate 41%

Churn rate or customer retention 4b%

Support ticket escalations 4b%

Market position (third party ratings) 39%

Net promoters score (NPS) 29%

Frequency hitting goals vs. shipping on time

Hit goals Ship products and features on schedule

Almost never (1% to 24% of the time) 1% 1%

Sometimes (25% to 4¾% of the time) 24% 2Ã%

Regularly (50% to 74% of the time) 4D% 4Ã%

Almost alæays (75% to 100% of the time) 29% 27%

15 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Take action: Empower your team with more It’s also worth noting the gap between hitting deadlines
context to help them hit goals. vs. hitting team-wide goals. Hitting shipping deadlines
lets you plan ahead—but for larger developments, the
Nobody wants to hit their goals 29% of the time. While launch motion itself can influence your ability to hit team-
every organization is different, the data gives us a few wide goals.
clear directives on how to improve.
Successful launches require a team not just to ship
First of all: focus on building autonomy in the team. on time, but to educate cross-functional partners,
This can increase your likelihood of hitting goals and customers, and prospects on those developments
shipping on time, as we discussed earlier in the report. so they can actually put them to use. So leaders should
You can also work on giving your team the tools they take a closer look at their launch processes, too.
need, and putting in the operational groundwork to make
information more available across your team’s tools—
especially in terms of performance metrics and
progress toward goals.

Spotlight story: Frame.io Naturally, that made it hard for the team to find the
information they needed. “We were spending so much
When Sam Seely, Director of Product, joined Frame.io time trying to find information that by the time we found
as their third product hire, the team was still managing it, the opportunity had passed.”
the roadmap in different presentations, documents, and
To fix it, they built a roadmap—but not in the form of
spreadsheets—every quarter he and the team would try
a deck. Instead, they made a living, accessible roadmap
a new method to share product updates with the rest of
that saved product managers time, and gave the entire
the company.
go-to-market team visibility into their work.

Read more

Frame.io

16 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Insight 5

Our tools need

to pull more weight
Building a solid tool stack helps teams stay focused.
Strong tools help your team distribute (and receive)
“There’s great value in role-specific tools...
information, and make it possible to streamline otherwise
But doing so without a clear connection to
manual work.
the bigger picture is a missed opportunity
Most teams feel like they have the tools they need—even
for both employees and the enterprise
if it means they have to use 14 tools a day to get their
as a whole.”
work done.

But when we take a closer look, this stack of tools might Ilan Frank
VP Product, Airtable
not be as impactful as it seems. Teams are still struggling
—previously Slack
to ship on time, and still having trouble finding the context Source
they need to excel at their jobs, with only 24% saying
it’s “very easy” to find the information they need from
their tools.

14 95% 1  4
Only

tools are used daily by the of teams agree they have the tools teams say it’s ,very easy: to (nd6
average product team they need to ship on time—but the the information they need for their
majority still don’t ship on schedule work

17 Airtable Airtable product insights report

A persistent visibility problem For example, only 53% of teams say they have high
visibility into objectives and goals—and only half have
Most product teams are at peace with their current high visibility into what’s shipping at all. So our tools
tool stack: 95% feel they have what they need to ship could be doing more to make that information visible.
in a timely manner. But as we saw in the last section,
And even for the information they do have visibility into,
that doesn’t always add up in results, since only about
getting that information isn’t easy. Only 24% of teams say
a quarter of teams say they always ship on time.
it’s “very easy” to use their tools to find the information
The disconnect between support and performance they need for their work.
could be in how those tools function. Even with the
average product team using 14 tools every day, there
are still significant gaps in visibility across the team.

Number of tools used day-to-day

1 to 4 4%

5 to 9 21%

10 to 14 30%

15 to 19 33%

20 to 24 9%

25 or more 3%

Where teams have high visibility into the product lifecycle

Objectives / goals 53%

Progress towards goals 53%

Project deliverk dates 53%

Performance metrics 51%

Customer and product feedback 50%

Projects in £ig˜ts 50%

Roadmap prioritization decisions 4µ%

18 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Take action: Make information highly visible Audit your tools and the data that lives in each of them,
and easy to access. keeping an eye out for duplicative and siloed sources.
From there, you can start to identify the different pools
Most teams have an overall positive sentiment of their of information on the team, and find opportunities
tools—even when those tools aren’t performing. So if to consolidate across product teams, researchers,
you’re trying to understand how impactful your tools are, engineers, and more. It’s a tedious task: but it’s worth
you’ll need to look beyond team sentiment toward them. it if your team stands to benefit.

So how do you know if your team is getting the

information need to do their best work (without having
to dig)? You can start by answering questions like:

• How visible is the information our team cares about?

How aware are they of our objectives and goals, our
performance metrics, projects in flight, and the like?

• How easy or hard is it for my team to find that

information? Do they have to dig through multiple
docs, apps, and spreadsheets to find the latest?
Or are they able to get updates from a more
consolidated source of truth?

• What process would your team need to go through

if they wanted to find the information on the previous
page for a team working on a different product, or a
different area of the product? Are they able to find
that information if they need to?

Spotlight: Airtable for product

operations webinar

Creating a solid, smoothly-functioning tool stack

isn’t just a tech problem—it’s a team-wide operational
problem. Solving it means building a stack that gives
your team what they need, without bogging them
down in red tape or restrictions.

In this webinar, we’ll take a tactical look at how product

teams run on Airtable. We’ll show how you can keep your
team working as one through all stages of their workflow,
so they can stay focused on what matters most: your
customers.

Watch now

19 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Conclusion

Investing in operational foundations helps Team practices, process, and tech all have outsized
your team get the right context, and build the ability to impact the way teams work—and the

right structure. After that, it’s time to hand the organization they work for. Building the right foundations
lets your team move faster, and stay focused on building
reins to your team.
innovative products your customers love. Here’s how:

1 Prioritize creating (and socializing) a single source

of truth for better alignment.
Only 42% of product teams understand the
long-term product vision.

2 Enable autonomy without sacrificing structure

Autonomous teams are more engaged, more likely
to understand the product vision, and more likely
to ship on time.

3 Audit your processes to identify blocks.

Most teams have processes to tackle every stage
of the product development lifecycle, but 9 in 10
still struggle.

4
Empower your team with more context to hit goals
Only 29% of teams always hit their goals—but better
visibility and information access can increase odds
of success.

5 Make information highly visible and easy to access.

A mere 24% of teams say it’s very easy to find the
information they need to do their work successfully.

20 Airtable Airtable product insights report

Methodology

The study includes 739 respondents • Full-time employee of a US company with 1,000
from iMAD’s B2B panel who met the or more employees that have one or more product

following criteria: teams that build digital products, services or

applications for consumers or businesses

• In one of the following industries: consumer good/

services, consumer technology, education, financial
services and insurance, healthcare and life sciences,
manufacturing, media/entertainment/publishing,
professional and technical services, retail and
ecommerce, technology, telecommunications
services, transportation, travel and hospitality,
or utilities and energy

• Associate level or above in customer analytics,

product design or development, product
management, product operations program
management, or sales who have responsibility for
consumer or business digital products or services

• Product team member who contributes to (or

has oversight for) one or more of the following:
analyzing and report on results/progress, building
and delivering products, collecting and analyzing
product and customer feedback, conducting user
research, managing product launches, managing
product roadmaps, prioritizing product features and
capabilities, setting and aligning on team objectives

Results were gathered via a 10-minute online survey

designed by Lawless Research and programmed in
Decipher, fielded March 22 to April 15, 2022. Data was
analyzed using Q Research.

21 Airtable Airtable product insights report

 About Airtable

About
Airtable is an app platform that enables teams running shoes, distributing life-saving
to build workflows that modernize their business or anything in between. To learn more
Airtable enables teams to build workflows More than 250,000 organizations, including more than
processes. More than 250,000 organizations, airtable.com.
that modernize their business processes. half of the Fortune 1000, use Airtable’s visual, flexible

Airtable
including more than half of the Fortune 1000,
tools to customize workflows that meet their exact needs,
use Airtable’s visual, flexible tools to customize
whether they’re creating blockbuster movies, designing
workflows that meet their exact needs, whether
running shoes, distributing life-savingLearn
vaccines,
moreor Contact sales
they’re creating blockbuster movies, designing
anything in between.

Learn more Contact sales

Airtable Airtable product ops playbook

22 Airtable Airtable product insights report