Knowledge sharing best practices for product teams
Give teammates what they need to know about the product and its direction
Last updated: September 2024
Do your teammates understand the product and your vision for it? As a product manager, you are responsible for sharing product direction with everyone in the organization and seeking their feedback and insights in return. On a fundamental level, this is what knowledge sharing is: the mutual exchange of relevant information between people, teams, and customers.
Robust knowledge sharing is especially important for product teams. You interact with cross-functional groups to build and deliver a lovable offering to customers. This requires close collaboration, frequent check-ins, and a strong knowledge base. When product teams are able to communicate effectively and share learnings, everyone can do their work effectively and make smart decisions. And the company as a whole benefits from greater trust and innovation.
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But at many companies, product managers bear an unfair burden when it comes to knowledge sharing. Maybe you can relate. Do you find yourself fielding the same questions repeatedly or manually updating information across different documents? Or maybe you do not have a central and easily accessible repository where you can store meeting agendas, roadmap presentations, and product knowledge base docs.
In this guide, we will focus on how product teams share knowledge internally, between teammates and different groups within the organization. (Note that knowledge sharing can also be external, between companies and customers.) Keep reading to learn more about the different types of information you need to communicate, as well as tips on how to approach knowledge sharing effectively.
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Why is knowledge sharing important?
Knowledge sharing is essential for getting the entire organization aligned so you can achieve more, faster. Our team at Aha! experiences this firsthand because we use our roadmapping software and knowledge bases each day. (We use Aha Knowledge to build and house our support articles for customers, too.) We know that when folks are empowered to find relevant information, everyone can make a greater impact and serve customers better.
Knowledge sharing goes beyond creating documentation, though. You are also responsible for capturing meeting agendas and notes, sharing insights from stakeholder check-ins, and presenting product roadmaps. (More on this in the next section.)
No matter the type of information, here are some of the benefits of strong and consistent knowledge sharing:
Efficiency: Teammates can self-serve, and everyone saves time when resources are accessible.
Clarity: The team knows what you are working toward and how you will do it.
Collaboration: A free flow of information and learnings means everyone can work together effectively. Likewise, any silos will break down.
Trust: Folks feel confident in what you are working to deliver, and information is transparent across the organization.
Although the benefits above focus on sharing knowledge internally, they also apply to external knowledge bases. With an organized repository of information, customers can quickly find answers to their questions and use your product with ease.
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What types of information do product managers share?
As a product manager, you communicate with the rest of the organization in a variety of ways. You likely speak at meetings, write messages in Slack or a similar tool, capture text and visuals in documents and whiteboards, and leave comments in your product knowledge base. You also record notes from all-hands meetings, smaller functional sessions, and check-ins with stakeholders. And you create and share product roadmaps with leadership, the product team, and even select customers or partners.
Having a single source of truth where you can store all of this data is essential. This is what your knowledge base is. For example, you can store notes from product team meetings and stakeholder check-ins in dedicated folders in your knowledge base. Or keep whiteboards from recent brainstorming sessions and customer journey maps for the team to refer to. The possibilities — like your responsibilities! — are (nearly) endless.
This is an example of an internal knowledge base in Aha! Knowledge. It features workspace documents and relevant documentation for colleagues.
Here is a look at some of the different types of information you share internally:
Examples | Relevant stakeholders | When to share | |
Internal resources |
| Make these documents accessible to the entire company. | Share them once, but make sure to update these documents as needed. |
Customer feedback |
| The product, engineering, customer support, marketing, and sales teams should be able to read customer research to better inform their own work. | Share them once, but update customer research on a regular cadence (weekly or biweekly) and encourage folks to look at updates. Some teams create and share a summary or digest to highlight new customer ideas and learnings. |
Roadmap communication |
| Ensure the engineering, customer support, and sales teams understand the changes and their implications. | Share them weekly or biweekly, but update them on an ongoing basis. |
Metrics |
| Leadership, the product team, and the entire organization | Share progress toward goals regularly. For example, some companies discuss this at a monthly business review. |
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Knowledge sharing tips for product teams
Ready to establish or refine your knowledge sharing process? Start by clarifying what you are sharing, why, and with whom. For example, some information is relevant to the entire organization. This includes things such as company goals, product positioning, strategic roadmaps, organizational charts, and IT policies. Certain documents are meant for specific functional groups (think personas and customer feedback for marketing, sales, and support teams). And other information is really only applicable to specific teams, including meeting notes or team-dependent onboarding resources.
There is also the question of when to share that information. Some knowledge is static or evergreen — you document or share it once, and it continues to stay relevant for months or years. But most documents require that you monitor and maintain them on an ongoing basis. For example, you draft a product positioning document once, but then let the team know when it is changing and why.
What matters most is that you have a system in place for regularly reviewing and updating documents. Sharing those updates with relevant stakeholders is critical, too. Here are some quick tips for more effective knowledge sharing:
1. Pick a format: Should you communicate the information in a meeting, a message, a memo, or all of the above? To help you choose, consider the urgency and importance of what you are sharing.
2. Decide on frequency: How often does knowledge sharing need to happen? Decide on a regular cadence and share more often when necessary.
3. Define your audience: Who needs access to the information? Think about what is important for each team to know. This might mean that you create separate knowledge bases (or separate sections of a single knowledge base): one for the support team and one for the sales team, for instance.
4. Choose a tool: Software such as Aha! Knowledge allows you to centralize notes, files, images, whiteboards, and more into a single hub. Look for a tool that allows you to create knowledge bases, standardize your product documents with repeatable templates, collaborate with teammates, and integrate with your roadmapping tool. You will also need to manage permissions — this involves assigning owners and deciding who can view the info and who can edit it. For most documents, you will want anyone in the organization or team to be able to view documents, but only select team members to edit them.
5. Organize data: Consolidate resources and organize documents. Remember that too much information can be just as unhelpful as too little information. Make your folders and documents consistent. Set naming conventions for documents, and use templates to ensure standardization. Encourage people to follow those standards when they create new documents or update existing ones.
6. Get visual: If you use knowledge base software that comes with whiteboarding capabilities, try visual diagrams to quickly communicate complex or technical topics. Then, organize flowcharts, diagrams, and wireframes into folders in the knowledge base. This way, teammates across product, engineering, support, and marketing can find these visuals when needed.
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FAQs about knowledge sharing
What is the difference between knowledge sharing and knowledge management?
Knowledge sharing refers to the mutual exchange of relevant information among people, teams, and customers. Knowledge management is a broader term. It describes the overall process of capturing, organizing, and then sharing information. Product teams need a strong knowledge management system in place in order to store product documentation and communicate vital information to colleagues and customers alike.
How does knowledge base software work?
Knowledge base software offers a single repository where organizations and teams can organize their documents in a consistent way. Product teams use knowledge base software to create product knowledge bases, streamline how they collaborate on documents and visuals, and develop a playbook for how they get work done. (Customer success teams and technical writers can also benefit from using knowledge base software.) And if your knowledge base software integrates with your roadmapping tool, you can easily go from planning new functionality to documenting how it works.
What should I look for in a knowledge sharing tool?
Look for a knowledge sharing tool that is designed specifically for product teams. You want the ability to create as many knowledge bases (for both internal and external audiences) as you need, templates to standardize your product documents, and built-in collaborative tools (such as comments, to-dos, and sharing). Aha! Knowledge offers all of the above — plus an AI assistant to boost efficiency and integration with Aha! Roadmaps, so you can seamlessly move from defining new features to capturing how they work.
