How to reset a product team without losing momentum

I don’t really buy into the whole “new year, new me” thing. But I do believe in teams regularly taking stock.

Most product teams run on quarterly cycles, with monthly look-back/look-forward sessions making an appearance too. On paper, that should be enough. In reality, the in-year delivery machine is relentless. You’re shipping, planning, responding, firefighting and before you know it, you’re so deep in the work that you’ve lost sight of whether you’re still heading in the right direction.

Being  part of a product team can feel like being on a rollercoaster with no actual end point.. The momentum is real, the expectations are high, and slowing down can feel like failure, even when it’s exactly what’s needed.

January creates a rare, natural pause. For companies whose work maps to the calendar year, it’s one of the few moments when teams are allowed to lift their heads, step out of delivery mode, and ask a more fundamental question: are we still aiming at the right thing?

A while back I wrote about PM wellbeing. This post is for everyone in and around a product team—engineers, designers, analysts, marketeers, product managers—because we all contribute to the pace, the pressure, and the direction of travel.

Teams don’t fail because they stop. They fail because they don’t know how to pause long enough to check they’re still heading towards the goal, rather than veering off to the left.

A reset is a short, intentional interruption (usually 1–3 days) where the team steps out of delivery mode to realign on mission, priorities, and how it all works together.

Most teams don’t wake up one day and decide to reset. It usually creeps up on you. Delivery keeps happening, the roadmap keeps growing, and the meetings keep multiplying, but something starts to feel off. Energy dips, trade-offs get harder and the team feels busy, but not effective.

A reset isn’t about panic or failure, but about noticing those signals early enough to do something useful with them.

So how do you know when it’s time?

Signs your team should consider a reset 

There’s tons of reasons for a good reset, and it’s not to throw everything in the bin, but a chance to revisit where you’re headed and how you might get there. Things are changing rapidly each day, so not only does the why change, but also the what and how, especially with advances  in technology. 

Here are some of the reasons a product team may consider a reset:

1. Your priorities keep shifting with no clarity: It’s like ping pong, or better yet, how about paddle – the sporting hit of 2025.

2. Your backlog is ever-growing but outcomes stall: You’re constantly taking things into backlog, from customer feedback, internal teams, competition, the HIPPO, tech debt etc, and it’s ever-growing. But you’re struggling to articulate the value you’re creating and it feels like you’re just doing stuff. 

3. The team is fatigued, there’s misalignment: This is tough. Like I said, it’s often relentless. Adding to  this chaos there are things like  “sprints”, a term I personally cannot stand, as it creates unnecessary anxiety and a sense of urgency which can cause quality to fall for the sake of output.   So, teams get tired. Yes we have annual leave, but teams also need time off together outside of  “the work”. 

4. You’re shipping, but nothing feels strategic: Busy fools. It’s easy to get into a rhythm of shipping, but what is it all leading to? Is it just a bunch of things, or are you headed toward that end goal, releasing little and often while  getting steady feedback? 

A reset doesn’t equal failure

Normalising resets, in my opinion, is part of healthy leadership. It’s not saying “we’ve focused on the wrong things”.  It’s more like, “as of today, where we are now, are these the right things to focus on? Would we do anything differently?”. 

Many companies avoid resets, usually at a steep cost. Big programmes/features don’t fail because they stop, but because nobody involved is brave enough to pause and take stock. . 

How to prepare for a reset

Here are some practical ways to prepare for a reset. 

• Create a single view of where the team needs to be across multiple horizons, so let’s say 6 months, 12 months and 24 months. Make sure  this aligns to the overall company goals. 
• Meet with your colleagues, stakeholders, leadership and get alignment from them. Understand what matters to them both in-quarter, in-year and in 24 months. 
• Assess capability gaps (tech, data, product, ways of working). Where is the team stumbling? You’ll get this from retros, but in  this case you need to really get under the skin of it. Not just based on the last month, but the last 6–12 months, all cards on the table. It would be even better if… maybe you could take all your former retros from the year and throw that into a secure LLM and summarise the themes.

Running the reset

It’s important to do this as a team, the team will play into the prep, but that should be lead by the product leader. For the entire team, here’s some guidance on running the reset.

• Get clarity on the mission, the customer problems you’re solving, and the value stream(s) you’re focusing on. 
• Be explicit  about who owns what. Where do you have external team dependencies? What could slow you down? 
• Review the work and remove what  no longer makes sense. This feels good, just clearing out that toy cupboard or wardrobe. Delete stuff. If it’s really that important, it’ll make its way back. 
• Revisit how you operate as a team (daily check ins, planning, reviews etc). Is the cadence right? Are you getting feedback fast enough? Do you have gaps? Is there an opportunity to create more space for people to do deep work? Is there a session periodically to ruthlessly prioritise against your mission?

Some of the artefacts that can emerge from the reset  are: 

• A one page strategy
• A ‘kill list’ — what are we dropping and why
• Your top 3 bets for the next 6 months
• A list of things we are explicitly not doing

Communicating the reset

Anyone who’s  worked with me knows how much I value writing as a skill. Get a narrative together, a simple one-pager describing the current situation, what you’re changing, why and the outcomes it’ll lead to. Share that with the product team, teams you enable, and even across the company for full transparency. The artefacts mentioned above will help you frame this in and beyond your product team.

In this, be honest about what wasn’t working and how you’re making it better. 

Change brings a level of instability, so keep people’s confidence in you while you make changes. Let them know how you’ll assess and pivot you need to. 

Common mistakes to avoid 

Doing a “half reset”. There’s no point in going half-heartedly. You’ve got to be serious about this, and commit together. So leaving the reset workshop committed as one team is critical. Don’t leave things unsaid or unanswered. 

Whenever you’re changing goals/direction, it usually means behaviours need to change too. It’s easy to slip back into old habits, like being too nice  or taking orders without thinking about the goals. 

We’re all humans and we’re weird and wonderful characters. Naturally, teams are made up of both very different, and sometimes very similar, people. If there are interpersonal dynamics that need to be addressed, this is the time to do it, one on one. 

Resetting too late, or not at all is a huge problem; often you’ll hear people say we’ve come too far to stop(!). The world changes fast, so we have to be able to respond to change and adapt. The goal of a reset isn’t to slow down. It’s to make sure the team is still running in the right direction, together.