FUNDAMENTALS OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: THE PROCESSES
Scoping and framing product discovery efforts
Depending on the complexity of your project, the scope of a product discovery journey can be small, medium, or large. For each of these scenarios, product teams need to use techniques that minimize costs and risks to discover solutions that create value.
While most product discovery efforts can be kicked off with little upfront investments, in larger projects or initiatives that entail multiple teams/projects, we will need to scope and frame the discovery work for two reasons:
- To align and clarify team members on the purpose of the project including the product vision, objectives, the customer(s) and problem(s) we are solving for, and the key results we should aim for
- To identify the highly critical risks that will need to be addressed including risks related to value, usability, viability, feasibility, and ethics
If the team is fully aligned and the risks are minimal or non-existent, then the team can proceed to development and delivery. However, if this is not the case, then the team will need to conduct upfront discovery framing work to scope the project.
Depending on the size and complexity of the project, there are generally three types of framing efforts that can be used individually or in combination with each other:
- Small complexity: Opportunity analysis
- Medium complexity: Working backward
- Large complexity: The lean (startup) canvas
Opportunity analysis
This is a quick and simple technique that aims to answer four key questions:
- What problem is the product trying to solve?
- Who is the customer or target market?
- What business objectives will the project aim to attain? (i.e., the O in OKRs)
- How do we measure success in attaining those objectives? (i.e., the KRs in OKRs)
To focus on creating value for customers, it’s important to start with the problem and clearly articulate what we are solving. There is a bias in us to begin thinking of solutions without truly understanding the drivers of the underlying problems we are solving. However, product teams, especially product managers, and entrepreneurs need to fall in love with the problem they are solving and not the solution because:
Most often, the initial solutions that teams deliver will rarely solve the problem in a meaningful way and it usually takes several iterations or the need to scale the product to truly create value
This is why product roadmaps that have deliverables outlined for 4 quarters are a problem because only a fortuneteller will know what features will stick and be a success 2–3 quarters down the line (unless your product is a laggard and is trying to reach parity with competition).
In other words, the only fact here is that there is a PROBLEM, and all else are hypotheses that need validation
Regarding the target market, product teams need to know their primary customers and not create solutions for everyone. Objectives can be as simple as “improving growth by reducing churn rates” or “improving growth by reducing overall onboarding time”. And measures of success can be for example “reduce churn rates by 2%”.
The opportunity analysis technique is a simple and quick tool to gauge smaller projects. The entire product team should understand the answers to all the above questions before initiating product discovery. Answering and communicating the above questions is the responsibility of the product manager.
Working backwards
When the scope of a project increases such as in cases where the project is tackling many customer problems or business objectives for example when aiming to both improve the usability/UX for current customers and improve onboarding for new ones, the opportunity analysis technique falls short.
The working backward technique aims to describe a future end state of the outcomes the product wants to create with an emphasis on the benefits it will create for customers. This document needs to be prepared for the product team by the product manager and the internal team should judge the value this imaginary state-to-be is creating. The product manager(s) will need to incorporate feedback and enhance the value of the imagined solution. In the next steps, the pitch can be taken to customers and validated feedback can be gathered from the target market. This cycle will continue until the team is confident they have discovered a product that will truly create value for the primary beneficiaries.
The lean (startup) canvas
This technique is best utilized when the product team is trying to discover a new product that can power a new business; this can be an early-stage startup trying to launch a new solution or an enterprise where you’re not asked to improve an existing product but to invent an entirely new one.
Both cases above carry a much broader set of risks, including validating demand and the value proposition fit, discovering the business model and monetization schema, go-to-market strategy and sales, the cost to produce and maintain, and tracking and measuring mechanisms. This requires the use of a business model canvas, or a lean canvas depending on your desires.
The main advantage of the lean startup canvas is that it helps product teams quickly highlight the key assumptions and risks facing a complex product, and helps prioritize those risks.
However, when prioritizing risks, it’s crucial to always consider value proposition risks as the highest priority risks; meaning that validating customers truly want and desire the product is of the utmost importance and all other risks come at lower priority levels. For example, this means that creating a feature that your competitor has with a better design is generally not a massive improvement to force customers to switch products and these are generally pitfalls that product managers fall into.
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