Working in Product - Building a Pipeline: Product Development in Practice 5.27

Summary

Theo Lista explores the balance between being a 'feature factory' and a strategic product development in this insightful presentation. He discusses the importance of aligning product features with a company's vision, using the 2019 iPad Photoshop launch as a cautionary tale. The talk delves into creating a robust product pipeline, emphasizing the need for strategic filtering of ideas, economic viability checks, and iterative validation with customers. Lista also touches on the challenges of product discovery, the unpredictability of the process, and the importance of opportunity assessment to avoid feature factories and ensure meaningful product development.

Takeaways

• 😀 The speaker emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between a product pipeline and a roadmap, highlighting the potential pitfalls of being a 'feature factory' without a clear underlying vision or strategy.
• 🔍 The transcript discusses the balance needed between producing features and maintaining a strategic vision, using the example of Adobe's 2019 iPad version of Photoshop, which was criticized for missing critical features.
• 🛠️ The speaker introduces the concept of a product pipeline, which is a process that filters ideas from inception to concrete features, aligning with the company's vision and strategy.
• 📈 The sales pipeline is used as a metaphor to describe the product pipeline, illustrating how ideas are filtered and curated to ensure they meet strategic and economic criteria before development.
• 🚫 The necessity for product teams to learn to say 'no' is highlighted, as not all ideas will align with the company's strategic vision, and this is a crucial part of the filtering process.
• 🔄 The transcript touches on the iterative nature of product development, with regular reviews of the strategy and pipeline to ensure alignment with current business objectives.
• 🔮 The importance of opportunity assessment is mentioned, suggesting the use of frameworks like the 'opportunity canvas' to evaluate the potential of ideas before committing resources to them.
• 👥 The speaker discusses the role of multidisciplinary teams in the product development process, including product councils and committees, to ensure a diverse set of inputs and validation.
• 🔧 The transcript acknowledges the challenges of the product discovery process, which can be unpredictable and require flexibility and creativity from product managers.
• 💊 An analogy is made to the pharmaceutical industry, which also deals with a high degree of uncertainty in the discovery phase, to illustrate the inherent challenges in product development.
• 📝 The final takeaway is a reminder of the need to focus on solving real problems and providing value, rather than simply executing on predefined solutions or features.

Q & A

What is the primary difference between a product pipeline and a product roadmap?

A product pipeline refers to the process of how ideas progress from concept to concrete features, including multiple layers of filtering and alignment with company strategy. A product roadmap, on the other hand, is a higher-level view of the direction the product is heading, linking the pipeline to the overall strategy and vision of the company.

Why are companies sometimes referred to as 'feature factories'?

Companies are called 'feature factories' when they are solely focused on producing features without a clear underlying vision or strategy. This can result in a spreadsheet of features with due dates, but may lack coherence and direction in terms of what the company is trying to accomplish.

What was the outcome of Adobe's launch of the iPad version of Photoshop in 2019?

The 2019 launch of the iPad version of Photoshop was not well-received because it was considered a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with critical features missing, such as filters, pen tools, vector drawings, and color spacing. This led to negative criticism and was a humbling lesson for Adobe's Chief Product Officer about the importance of not just shipping an MVP but ensuring it meets user expectations.

What is the importance of balancing vision and feature production in a company?

Balancing vision and feature production is crucial because while companies need to produce features to meet market demands, they must also ensure that these features align with the company's overarching vision and strategy. This prevents companies from becoming mere feature factories and ensures that product development is purposeful and directed.

How does the sales pipeline model relate to the product pipeline?

The sales pipeline model, which involves sourcing leads, qualifying them, and eventually closing sales, can be seen as a parallel to the product pipeline. In the product pipeline, ideas are sourced from various inputs, filtered through strategic and economic considerations, and eventually developed into features that align with the company's vision.

What is the role of a strategic filter in the product pipeline?

The strategic filter in the product pipeline ensures that the ideas being considered are in line with the company's strategic direction. It helps to focus on ideas that are likely to contribute to the company's goals and to discard or defer those that do not align with the current strategy.

Why is it necessary for product teams to learn to say no?

Product teams need to learn to say no to ideas that, despite being excellent, do not meet the strategic vision of the company. This is important to maintain focus on projects that will contribute to the company's goals and to avoid diluting resources on initiatives that may not be strategically valuable.

What is the significance of the selection points in the product pipeline?

Selection points in the product pipeline are crucial for determining the viability and business sense of potential features or products. They involve assessing whether an idea will be economically feasible and if it makes sense in the context of the company's direction.

How does the product pipeline link to the product roadmap?

The product pipeline feeds into the product roadmap by providing a stream of ideas and features that have been filtered and refined according to the company's strategic vision. The roadmap then outlines the short-term and long-term direction of the product, showing how the ideas from the pipeline will be developed and released.

What is the purpose of regularly reviewing the company's strategy in relation to the product pipeline?

Regularly reviewing the company's strategy helps to ensure that the product pipeline remains relevant and aligned with the current goals and vision of the company. It allows for adjustments to be made to the pipeline and roadmap to reflect changes in the market, technology, or business objectives.

How does the process of product discovery differ from the idea of a predictable, step-by-step process?

Product discovery is often more complex and less predictable than a step-by-step process. It involves multiple stages of customer interaction, prototyping, and validation, which can be subject to change based on feedback and evolving understanding of the problem. It requires flexibility and adaptability, rather than a rigid, predictable approach.

What is an 'opportunity canvas' and how is it used in product management?

An opportunity canvas is a tool used to quickly assess and map out the potential of various product opportunities. It helps to determine which ideas are promising and which are not by asking key questions about the problem being solved, the value proposition, and other factors that contribute to the viability and attractiveness of an opportunity.

Why is it important for product managers to understand the problem they are solving before jumping to solutions?

Understanding the problem is crucial because it provides the foundation for developing a solution that truly addresses the needs of the users or market. By focusing on the problem first, product managers can avoid developing solutions that may not be necessary or effective, and instead create products that deliver real value.

Outlines

00:00

🚀 Balancing Product Vision and Feature Delivery

Theo Lista discusses the distinction between a product pipeline and a roadmap, emphasizing the pitfalls of 'feature factories' where companies focus solely on producing features without a clear strategy. He uses the 2019 launch of the iPad version of Photoshop as a case study to illustrate the importance of not just shipping features but ensuring they align with the company's vision and strategy. The speaker advocates for a balanced approach to building a product pipeline that filters ideas through strategic and economic lenses to ensure they are in line with the company's goals.

05:02

🛠 The Strategic Filtering of Product Ideas

This paragraph delves into the process of how product teams should strategically filter ideas to align with company strategies. It highlights the importance of saying no to ideas that do not fit the strategic vision, even if they are excellent. The speaker describes the selection points where ideas are evaluated for viability and business sense, and how the product roadmap and strategy are interlinked. The paragraph also touches on the necessity of regularly reviewing the strategy to prevent the company from becoming stagnant or a 'feature factory'.

10:02

🌐 The Dynamic Nature of Product Pipeline Management

The speaker provides an overview of the product pipeline process, from the generation of ideas to their prioritization and filtering based on business and economic factors. It discusses the importance of stakeholder reviews and the product release cycle, which occurs on a quarterly basis, contrasting with the annual strategy cycle. The paragraph emphasizes the iterative nature of the process, the need for flexibility, and the challenge of managing issues that affect customers, such as through a 'deal desk' approach.

15:02

🎯 Navigating the Complexities of Product Discovery

In this paragraph, the complexities of the product discovery process are explored, where product managers are tasked with defining a product within a tight timeframe. The speaker outlines an ideal four-week process from defining the problem to user testing, but acknowledges the reality often deviates from this plan due to various challenges such as user engagement and prototype refinement. The importance of adapting and iterating based on user feedback is stressed to avoid producing unusable products.

20:05

💊 Embracing Uncertainty in the Product Development Cycle

The speaker compares the product discovery process to the pharmaceutical industry's approach to drug discovery, noting the inherent uncertainty and ambiguity in finding solutions. They discuss the fear of investing in a discovery process that may not yield immediate results and the challenge of managing expectations within a company. The paragraph also touches on the benefits of agile processes, despite the potential for significant changes in direction during development.

25:07

🌟 The Art and Science of Opportunity Assessment

The final paragraph introduces the 'opportunity canvas,' a tool for assessing and mapping the potential of product opportunities. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the problem before jumping to solutions and provides a framework for evaluating opportunities based on various criteria. The speaker leaves the audience with a challenge to think critically about the problems they are solving and the value of the solutions they provide, rather than simply fulfilling requests as defined by others.

Keywords

💡Product Pipeline

A product pipeline refers to the process by which ideas for new products or features move from conception to realization. In the video, it's used to describe the progression of ideas through various stages of development, emphasizing the importance of aligning these ideas with a company's vision and strategy. The script mentions that not all companies refer to this concept in the same way, but it's crucial for ensuring that product development is purposeful and not just a collection of random features.

💡Roadmap

A roadmap in the context of product development is a strategic plan that outlines the direction a company intends to take with its products or services over time. The script distinguishes between a roadmap and a pipeline, with the former being a higher-level view that links to the company's strategy and the latter being the detailed process of how ideas become features. The roadmap is used to guide the pipeline and ensure that the product development aligns with the company's long-term goals.

💡Feature Factories

The term 'feature factories' is used in the script to describe organizations that focus primarily on producing new features without a clear underlying vision or strategy. This can lead to a spreadsheet of features with deadlines but may lack coherence and direction. The script warns against this approach, suggesting that while features are important, they must be balanced with a broader strategic vision.

💡MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product, which is a version of a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future development. The script references the 2019 launch of the iPad version of Photoshop as an example of an MVP that failed to meet expectations because it lacked critical features, leading to negative criticism and a lesson in the importance of understanding customer needs.

💡Strategic Filter

A strategic filter is a mechanism used to evaluate and select ideas based on their alignment with the company's overall strategy. The script describes how a strategic filter helps to ensure that the product development process is focused and that ideas are directed in a way that supports the company's vision. It's part of the process of refining the product pipeline and deciding which ideas to pursue.

💡Economic Filter

An economic filter is used to assess the financial viability of potential product ideas or features. The script uses the example of expanding into the Australian market to illustrate how an idea might pass a strategic filter but fail an economic filter if the costs outweigh the potential benefits. This concept is integral to the product pipeline process, ensuring that only economically sensible ideas move forward.

💡Opportunity Canvas

The opportunity canvas is a tool mentioned in the script for mapping and evaluating potential opportunities for product development. It's designed to help identify which ideas are promising and which are not, and to guide the discovery process. The script suggests that this tool can be used for both immediate product ideas and those that a company might want to be ready to deliver on in the future.

💡Product Discovery

Product discovery is the process of identifying, understanding, and validating the problems that a product or feature is intended to solve. The script describes it as an amorphous and challenging process that involves customer interviews, wireframing, prototyping, and user testing. It's a critical phase in the product development pipeline that requires creativity and adaptability.

💡Agile Processes

Agile processes, such as Scrum, are iterative and flexible approaches to product development that emphasize rapid prototyping, continuous improvement, and adaptive planning. The script discusses the potential fear and resistance to agile processes due to their unpredictable nature and the risk of having to abandon or significantly alter initial plans based on ongoing feedback and discovery.

💡Product Councils and Committees

Product councils and committees are groups within an organization that review and assess product ideas and development progress. The script mentions these as key ways to ensure that the product pipeline is valid and aligned with the company's strategy. They provide a formalized method for stakeholder review and decision-making in the product development process.

💡ROI (Return on Investment)

ROI is a financial metric used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the profitability of different investments. In the context of the script, ROI is implicitly considered when discussing the economic filter and the prioritization of product ideas. It's a critical consideration in determining whether the potential benefits of a product feature justify the resources required to develop it.

Highlights

The distinction between a product pipeline and a roadmap is essential for companies to avoid becoming 'feature factories' without underlying vision or strategy.

The 2019 launch of the iPad version of Photoshop serves as a humbling lesson on the importance of not releasing an MVP without critical features.

A balance is needed where companies avoid being solely feature-focused but still produce necessary features aligned with their vision.

Building a product pipeline properly helps in solving the right questions and aligning features with the company's vision.

The sales pipeline serves as a metaphor for the product pipeline, illustrating the process from idea generation to concrete feature development.

The strategic filter in the product pipeline ensures that ideas align with the company's direction, even if it means setting aside good ideas that don't fit.

Product teams must learn to say no to ideas that don't meet the strategic vision, which can be frustrating but is necessary for focus.

The selection points in the pipeline determine the viability and business sense of ideas, ensuring they align with broader company goals.

The product roadmap links the pipeline to the company's strategy, ensuring that the development process is aligned with long-term objectives.

Regularly reviewing the strategy is crucial to prevent companies from becoming stale and turning into feature factories.

The product release cycle and the strategy cycle are iterative processes that require constant reassessment and adjustment.

The importance of analyzing failures and setting objectives and key results (OKRs) for measurable outcomes in product development.

The challenge of defining a product within a tight timeframe and the potential pitfalls of not iterating based on user feedback.

The reality of product discovery is often messy and unpredictable, requiring adaptability and resilience from product managers.

The pharmaceutical industry's discovery process serves as an example of managing uncertainty and ambiguity in product development.

The fear of the unpredictable nature of the discovery process and its impact on commitment to agile or scrum methodologies.

The opportunity canvas as a tool for evaluating the potential of product ideas and understanding the problems they aim to solve.

The importance of starting with the problem rather than the solution when developing new products or features.

Transcripts

hello everybody this is Theo lista with

the next segment let me share the

presentation and get started so actually

quite interestingly as as we come to

this talking about the product pipeline

and what can come and of course it's a

useful distinction to have at this point

what the difference between a pipeline

and the roadmap is there's been a lot of

talk over the past week about companies

that exist as feature factories and what

that quite means and the general take on

feature factories is it's a prior

organization that is solely focused on

features and will effectively produce a

spreadsheet of once and then slap due

dates against them and then just start

going which it can be easy to see

companies in that vein if there's no

underlying vision or underlying strategy

to what the company seems to be trying

to accomplish but that is of course

counter pointed against the fact that

features really matter the the exercise

used here is the 2019 launch of the iPad

version of Photoshop where it got

completely panned and Adobe's chief

product officer effectively said this is

a humbling lesson in the fact that when

you do ship in MVP you have to be ready

for the the negative criticism that

comes out of that and in that case it

was that critical features were missing

it missing like filters pen tools vector

drawings color spacing so and become

something of a balance where companies

can't be seen as feature factories but

also have to produce features and and

understand where that comes in and I

don't have any neat answer for that it's

a balancing act of having a vision and

executing all the features needed but

what I'm what I'm gonna talk about here

with a little more detail may go sort of

the way towards creating a more new

understanding of that and that would be

if you build your product pipeline

properly then you start to get to a

point where you're solving the right

questions and you're building the

features needed but with further and

serve of your company's vision so not

all companies refer to this the same I

quite like referring to the product

pipeline because it's it gives you that

understanding of how something

progresses from the idea stage to

something that comes out to the concrete

feature but of course there's there's so

many different possible entry points

into the product roadmap or the

development pipeline so this is a fairly

standard sales pipeline people live and

die by this but this is where the idea

comes from effectively you have all of

your leads being sourced through

multiple different reasons so this might

be you know inbound email it might be

seeing somebody at an event called

outreach there's so many different way

is that information and in this case

prospects or potential leads come into a

company and then there's this process of

curating and processing them so

qualification dealing with the the leads

that's probably aren't going to go

anywhere the best way of focusing your

efforts is to only really continue with

those prospects that seem like they are

interested or they have particular needs

that you feel you're able to meet and

then and so on and so on and so on you

get to the bottom of the triangle and

then the sale happens for a a smaller

smaller proportion the of the inbound

leads you're only gonna get a fraction

the people that come in and I see the

product pipeline there's something

something quite similar it's everybody

is able to come up with ideas

everybody has theories and desires on

our product should go but it's only

through multiple layers of filtering

that you get to something which is the

end results and the things you actually

build

so this is one example I this is not the

litera strategy we we have multiple

conveyor belts of information flowing

through this process but we don't have

anything like this visualized but this

does give an example of what you could

be looking at so you see this as a

funnel as well you have on the left hand

side there's a filter and then you move

through a series of processes so the

first item and it's good to have this

visualized here because you can see lots

of dots all pointing in different

directions and the strategic filter for

a company is making sure that the ideas

that you have in front of you are those

which mean that you're roughly heading

in the same direction all those ideas so

the bigger a company gets so the bigger

its teams gets the more the more

strategies you might have going on at

the same time but that's that's an

aspect of the capacity rather than an

aspect of an aspect of being able to

balance multiple items so you can have

if you have three development teams each

can perhaps be contributing towards a

different aspect of the company's

strategy but as a general rule of thumb

the more focused you are the more

results you get out of this process so

this filter that blue thing is what's

being carried through the process

everything else you effectively put in a

shoe box and when it aligns with your

strategy again it gets brought back out

but up until that points is left which

is kind of the first place where product

teams and product managers have to learn

to say no it's it can be very

frustrating and also quite disheartening

to have an excellent idea put in front

of you but it doesn't meet your

strategic vision and has to go and pause

but it happens and as long as the

strategy is sound that's not necessarily

a bad thing it just means that you're

building evidence changing strategy in

the future then you get to the selection

points we have to work out whether it

will be viable

or whether it will make good business

sense so if you have a strategy of

wanting to expand into the Australian

market and the the solution might be and

I'm talking as a business rather than as

a as a product organization just to

begin with is we could fly over from

North America our entire sales team and

then just go door-to-door cold calling

and knocking on doors and talking to

people and trying to drum up interest

that way that might pass the strategic

filter because it's in line with the

vision you want to extend in Australia

but then there's the economic filter one

that will cost thousands upon thousands

of dollars and - would that actually be

effective so you start to filter the

this pure and unrefined refined idea

through the lenses of justice make sense

to the business does this make sense to

the direction we want to move it to and

and then you get into building the

actual project pipeline and this is

where the the road map can be helpful so

what we see here in this actual pipe

here corresponds more to the very

short-term product roadmap so to say

you're building something over the span

of a year what's in here it could just

be over the course of say three months

but it does start to create that link to

how the ideas come in and how everything

that goes through that process links to

the higher roadmap which in turn links

to the strategy which in turn applies to

all these ideas that are coming through

which we're either being continued with

or being being left to the side for the

time being this is why it without

regularly reviewing the strategy itself

product you know products and companies

can become a bit stale and maybe they do

turn into the future factories that I

mentioned earlier if that strategy never

changes then it effectively just becomes

a self-perpetuating cycle the strategy

remains the same you produce the

features and they in turn dictate what

the strategy is and that in turn

dictates the idea

there's no real new input so this

process here has analysis of failures to

understand whether you're not hitting

the mark I mentioned about two weeks ago

how the product team sets okay our

objectives and key results to have

something to measure against and give an

opportunity to just be clear about what

you're achieving or what you're missing

as a company litera what we generally do

is we review this entire cycle once a

year so towards the end of the year or

start of the year we'll review

everything that's come in through these

filters and then also our business

objectives and what the strategy is that

aligns to that and then then see whether

it needs to be changed or not and most

years will think we'll discover that

maybe one project level will need to

extend into the year and that's fine but

over widen company themes change so if

that fits under that umbrella then it

can stay if it doesn't fit under that

umbrella then we need to start wrapping

it up and putting it to bed because it's

not going to last much further into the

new year

so this is a short overview of I suppose

our process and how our pipeline would

work it's not a pipe of course but it

gets a little bit of the way towards

showing what you would expect to be so

this first part here is all of those

individual ideas as they crop up and as

they come into the company so multiple

different ways that this can crop up

it's meeting the customers it's hearing

from customers through all sorts of

different channels and there's also what

competitors are doing and and the

adoption of the things that we've

released in the past to assess where

there's something that we released

because we thought that it would

contribute towards a particular strategy

if that's gone well then it seems like

we had the right idea if it's not going

well then it seems as something

additional that we should be considering

that maybe we weren't and then it's just

prioritizing and working out which need

to come first and that's a little bit of

that is the is the business economic

filter so you can have say a hundred

ideas and I mentioned earlier putting

them into a shoebox or keeping them to

the side that is one way of looking at

it it's whether you make the formal

decision to say we're not going to

commit to this and we're not going to

move it forward effectively at all

whereas some companies will say ok we

have a hundred items we're going to rank

them from most to least important and

the least important though they may

never be done but if we get through the

top 99 then nothing else comes in then

we'll do it we we tend to again do a

blend of that approach so we will pick

the likeliest items prioritize those and

be the unlikely items effectively put a

stamp on them saying we're unlikely to

cou continue with this and every so

often we'll review that see whether it

remains the case so again here roi

demand market

but these are all business and economic

filters and then there's multiple

methods of stakeholder review to assess

whether these items which are now in the

pipeline are valid or not and I've

already mentioned product council's

product committees those are two of the

key ways this is covered but of course

we can't have them right now but things

like water cooler conversations and

in-person meetings and just ketchup

Steve these are all additional methods

of sharing this information and trying

to make sure that you're on the same

page as things have been progressed and

then it's just this cycle I mentioned

that our product release cycle occurs on

a quarterly basis the wide a strategy

cycle I suppose occurs on an annual

basis and that's all about making sure

that's whenever we have the opportunity

to step back and assess what's happened

that we are able to understand the

magnitude of what's what's been

delivered so a few of these items here

mostly correspond to that forecasting of

courses for the more advanced items

which might require an entire project of

themselves rather than a quarter to be

achieved and deal desk

deal desk I may go into in some detail

in a future session that is effectively

our way of managing and triaging issues

that affect customers so every every bug

that a customer reports every everything

that could be potentially going wrong

with a customer every every week and for

some products that's multiple times a

week that is is reviewed by a kind of a

much like a product committee a

multidisciplinary group of people who

all have either some inputs or some

connection with the customer to make

sure those are progressed and understand

what additional information is needed if

any and as you see here this iterates

this cycles and this continues

so this is an illustration it gets a bit

messy as has all practices do and they

hid the reality of building something in

a company with multiple people so this

illustrates the concept of when

companies and it could be the entire

company it can be a subset when when

people get excited about the idea of a

product and then require the product

manager themself to define it this

illustration here is is hopefully the

ideal situation where multiple steps and

multiple measures occur but it can

happen as well that the desire for a

particular product need as identified

and then somebody is asked to go and run

with it so you have this task to define

something you know that maybe the

engineering team will be finished with

what they're currently working on in

about four weeks so that means you have

four weeks to define the problem

you can use all sorts of best practices

assess the opportunity and I'll go into

a little bit more about opportunity

assessment in a bit and starts

interviewing users better understand the

problem that needs to be solved

identify early requirements and then by

week two you should be able to start

designing the the prototype whether

that's where the interaction designer

whether that's wire framing and then in

the third week you'll start user testing

using that prototype or framework and

then in week four you're flesh out the

details of the use cases and review the

prototype at the engineering team that

sounds pretty good to me but the the

reality of things isn't always in that

case so you can effectively find that's

in these initial user discussions

sometimes users aren't actually as

excited about the idea as say the

management team was when they suggested

it or it's difficult to produce a

prototype that users are able to

understand or walk through properly and

users might just not be as excited about

the ideas and the prototype when they

try it but at that point you you're

finished you have your time have your

four weeks the engineers are ready and

then for the next three to six months it

might just be that they have to build

that it's the the product that you

prototyped identified but it's kind of

boring an exciting unusable and then you

get the point where you ship and of

course the results are lackluster and

the management team is questioning what

was done so the problem there is not the

software it's from the engineering teams

faults they they're built to code and

they built to spec and the blame can

fall upon the product manager and

ultimately what that means is unless

you're able to change your prototype

adjust as you're creating as you're

testing with users yeah you're not going

to produce the right thing and you're

not going to get the results you want so

this is a bit more complicated and that

simple four week four step process but

it has multiple multiple stages and

multiple different interactions it's I'd

say trying to create this neat

characterization of what the product

discovery cycle should look like that

can be one of the biggest traps for a

product manager it's it's very very

tempting to want to have a reliable

consistent understandable way of finding

customers talking to them wire framing

but the reality is you're on week one

you'll start reaching out to people they

won't get back to you for two weeks

you'll arrange meetings with people

they'll flake and you'll start wire

framing on what little information you

would be able to get from customers and

then you'll start showing it to those

customers and they don't like it then

the people who flaked on you'll get back

in touch with you and your show then the

wireframes and they'll suddenly like it

and you get all of these different

different points different customer

interactions at different stages in the

refinement process and it could be

challenging and product discovery makes

it sound kind of as amorphous as it is

and ultimately this can be a process of

debate but whether this process is more

art or science and and I would say the

the urge to get processes in place you

can create a framework which gets most

of it but the house does have to be some

art or some creativity to pushing

through the rest of the the way you can

you can engineer the building blocks

that will make something robust and

supportable but to get to that point of

user delight and

here this is indicated by hearts and

value being delivered but delight is an

actual metric that many companies

measure and that it takes a bit of a

mental rewiring process to get through

and yeah so you need to get the product

solution that's usable useful feasible

sometimes delightful and you effectively

need to design the validate with

customers and the engineering team and

charge straight through this amorphous

mass so even with the help of multiple

people it's it can still be a challenge

the pharmaceutical company industry

sorry they provide a pretty good example

of this we work with a lot of people in

life sciences and their discovery

process is incredibly rife with

potential ambiguity so let me say the

markets discovery it isn't necessarily

very difficult so there's all sorts of

problems that need to be solved in terms

of healthcare whether that's creating

vaccines creating novel drugs for

managing completely mundane illnesses

you know all sorts of those all sorts of

those problems would be great to solve

so there's no shortage of those the

issue is discovering what the solution

is and drug companies go into this

discovery phase completely cognizant of

the fact that there's no guarantee that

you'll come up with anything and only

vague I'd understandings of how long

that's actually going to take so as a

company they have to build in that

element of uncertainty into their

structure and also into their pricing

model so software I think we can get a

little bit closer to that because

there's I'd say with fewer complexities

in software but that may be an amateur's

understanding but it is

a phase shift that management teams find

difficult to reconcile and that is one I

would say this lack of predictability of

the discovery process there's this fear

that you'll spend months and months

working on discovery and then end up

with nothing to show and if you did at

least build something and then ship it

you can point to something to say we

built and ship something of course if

you go into this without that

understanding and with a commitment to

and we build something which you know

will solve a active problem and delight

people but you may never get to that

solution that can be challenging and it

can also be a fear of moving into scrum

or agile processes because you can start

out with a commitment to one particular

release goal and of course with agile

that could completely flip on its head

at any point if the justification is

that and I would say second the fault of

the engineering team sitting around

without anything valuable to do again

can can drive people up the wall because

R&D spend is is usually a fairly

proportion proportionate part of the

business huge as well the amount of

salary that's been thrown around the

amount of technological investment so I

think that's this discovery process here

it works it's just that it can be

difficult to expand the benefits of it

but if you're doing this you you will

ultimately produce items for for your

roadmap or for your pipeline and they'll

be well designed and well validated and

then there are additional things that

you can you don't have to do as much

validation for theirs there's always

maintenance

there's always direct customer requests

and canvassing the different end points

to account the number of people that

requested it and

these can certainly be very simple

things that they actually need much

wireframing a much more prototyping or

even much user validation sometimes it

is just as simple as you need this done

and you can flip a switch and make it

happen so I mentioned that I will talk

about this I will do so quite briefly

but this is opportunity canvas there's

all sorts of different different

evolutions of this different people who

built them I I don't know who originated

this it might have been

Marty Kagan I think I first picked this

up from the strategize er series of

books but effectively this is aiming to

walk you through some of this discovery

some of these necessary questions that

need to be asked

so opportunities exist all around we've

seen that in the pipeline we've seen

that in the number of ideas that come in

and things are always changing so new

tech new people with different talents

competitors rising and falling and this

is a way of trying to quickly map which

opportunities are promising and which

ones aren't

and also I use this quite a lot of time

for product ideas that we're not ready

to deliver on but we might want to be

ready ready for in any air or so

so if we leave the process of deciding

whether or not to build a product or a

particular feature to intuition this

this intuition there's large customers

either offering to fund the creation of

a particular feature or just saying it

needs to be done and and expecting it to

be so there's a two of the large way is

that features can get built that's

that's quite a lot of the time that's

what businesses will be faced with

that'll be one of the pressures being

spanned across the product team and one

of the things that seem to be aware of

so typically somebody in the the

business side or marketing side will

have a requirements document for

marketing and what this does is describe

the opportunity rather than the solution

and so this here is is the product

team's approach and that very thing so

rather than leaping to understand what

the solution needs to be this starts

with the premise that you can't quite do

that until you fully understand what the

problem is and I've gone through

multiple stages to understand that so

these have stressy there's 10 items here

although this one says one twice and

never lets a glaring inaccuracy like

that get in the way of of doing

something that might be beneficial but

usually the hardest one is is the first

question to answer

which is what problem is this going to

solve and effectively what what is the

value proposition so I will leave you

with that the next session I I don't

actually have worked out yet so we will

see it may be that we have a short break

on this series and then continue with

the semi frequent round ups of what's

been happening in the product councils

and private committees so now if you are

involved in not just

management's butts any roll which

involves incoming requests and being

asked for particular items it this is a

useful framework just to be starting to

think about I'm actually solving what's

not a problem I'm solving when I say yes

I'll help with this and what kind of

solution can we giving that provides

more value than simply doing something

in the way that the person who's asked

has strictly defined for me so I guess

that's more of a life lesson rather than

the product management lesson but that's

generally how these things go so I'll

leave you with that thank you for

listening

I hope you enjoy the rest of the day and

hopefully we'll be seeing more of this

soon bye for now everyone