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User Persona Template

May 5, 2022 By Scott

In an earlier article, I provided some templates for Customer Journey Mapping. And I even mentioned how you might need to do different maps for various customer cohorts. What I didn’t provide was any guidance about those cohorts. So I’m going to try to fix that now.

As is often the case, there’s a lot of tools and templates out there for creating user personas. Some of the tools are behind paywalls as part of various product management tool software. And a lot of this stuff is really good. But also potentially expensive for startups or small teams. But the “free” templates are often either poor, (my opinion), or behind presentation template paywalls or possibly riddled with embedded malware. So here you go…

I’d originally produced this template as part of a product management training program I’d built for one of the large online courseware offerings, but the template itself is already public so here it is:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Product Management

Feature Ideation and Evaluation for Product Managers

April 21, 2022 By Scott

We have models for trying to ideate what features might be good to include in a product or service. And we’ve got ways to assess idea value. But how often do we really think about the many potential input sources for creating ideas? And what about how we can quickly round out those initial ideas? The following write up assumes that we’re talking about existing products and enhancing them.

We have tools from typical brainstorming sessions to Design Sprints. But again, what about the root sources of ideas? Are there structured ways to try to get to some good ideas? I’m going to offer up a few depictions of idea sources, as well as some ways to quickly assess some early ideas. This latter part, quick initial assessment – or triage, is really the main point. There’s already plenty written about idea development, innovation workshops and the like. But fast assessment is increasingly important. The Minimum Viable Product and Scrum worlds are – at their core – really about trying to sell speed. Yes, yes, I know… the goal is the right product and feature set at speed, but it at least feels over the past decade or so that the desire for speed has been more at the forefront. (In spite of what’s being sold as the product-market fit benefits of the methods.)

Personally, I believe at a fundamental level there’s only two real sources of new product ideas…

  • Flash of Insight: This is when you just have that “ah hah” moment. It’s when you’re using some kitchen item and say, “why doesn’t someone make this.” Or a digital product and you think, “you know, if only I had THIS everything would be great.” At that point, you can send an idea into a company, or build your own products if you’re feeling entrepreneurial. But the raw source of your idea was an experience of a visceral need to solve an issue to which you had a solution based response.
  • Research: Yes. Of course. Research. Obvious, right? But is it really? There are a lot of different ways to do consumer and marketplace research.

And what about when it’s time to actually craft these ideas into features? We have the modern idea of a Story when we’re using Agile. And there’s a simplistic idea of “What is our Definition of Done” for a story, also referred to as “Acceptance Criteria.” But in some ways, this last bit is really an add on to try to fix the fact that Scrum – for all it’s speedy goodness – may have dropped too much off as it tried to abandon Waterfall methods and heavier product definition documents. Ignoring potential holes doesn’t make them go away. Maybe a bit more needs to be done prior to a sprint planning meeting. While every line item on the lists below doesn’t need to be in the recipe every time, it’s still useful to have a checklist. So I’m going to present some tools for a three phase approach to frame these issues. Here’s the categories and links to the presentations and templates if you don’t feel like wading through the rest of the Step-by-Step explanatory text that follows.

Charts / Sheets Tools for your use…

NOTE: These are meant to be checklists. There are likely too many steps here. You have to edit these down so they apply to your situation.

  • Feature Ideation: Sources and Processes
  • Feature Round Out (Better Definitions)
  • More Formal Feature Prioritization

If you want a little background first, let me take a few moments to go through each of these…

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Product Management, Tech / Business / General

Customer Journey Map Template

March 28, 2022 By Scott

While working on a new component of a project, I had occasion to build out a Customer Journey Map. Even though I’ve done this several times before, I’d kind of just cobbled together a map using Omnigraffle or LucidChart or some other drawing program. But this time I had to do a few of them and wanted a more common format template. What I found was a ton of examples in image search, but very few usable editable templates. (There were a few behind some paywalls and seemingly sketchy download requirements, but not much else.)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Analytics, Marketing, Product Management, UI / UX

The Order: Vision, Mission, Goals, Strategies, Objectives, Tactics

January 25, 2022 By Scott

Late 2024 Update to this post: Before I get into this really long article, I have to share this book with you. It’s called “No Bullsh*t Strategy: A Founder’s Guide to Gaining Competitive Advantage with a Strategy That Actually Works” by Alex M.H. Smith. Awesome. The whole book is probably shorter than my article and likely more valuable. Anyway… to our story…


Warning. This is about to be a long article. So instead, here’s the tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) version: Here is your vision/mission/strategy all in one sentence… There’s something you want to do in the world because you think it has value and you have a better way of doing it than anyone or better yet, a different way to satisfy some need. Next, here’s your one sentence goals/objectives/tactics. You have some specific means to accomplish these things.

There. You’re done. You don’t have to go further. Or you can read Alex Smith’s posts and his wonderfully short book on strategy.

So you really want the full version? OK then…

Why anyone would want to re-hash this topic is a fair question. It came out of a discussion I had with some relatively junior product managers who came to Product, as is often the case, from other specialties. So many management books and courses… So many definitions of the same things. So many years of struggle. And yet… we still have differing definitions, suggestions, and apparently confusion about what seem to be the basics for high level strategy and associated concepts. You can easily search for some of these key words and find other authors with completely opposite viewpoints of each other. But not always explanations as to why. I, perhaps foolishly, think I might understand where some of the confusion has come into play. And since I’ve got what I think might be a path through this, I’m going to give it a shot…

There’s a really long writeup coming, but here’s a summary…

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Product Management, Tech / Business / General

When NOT to Work with Outsourced Software Development Companies

January 11, 2022 By Scott

Several of my past articles have dealt with “When to Work with Software Development Companies” and “How to Work with Software Development Companies.” I’ve been asked to come up with some thoughts about When NOT to work with an outsourced software development company. In the interests of full disclosure, I’ve worked for a fairly large software development company in the past. I’m a big fan of using such services for all manner of reasons ranging from cost to flexibility, and so on. In other words, I’m biased towards the value of outsourced software development; at least for some purposes. Still, after some recent conversations and friendly debate with colleagues and others, it’s clear that I haven’t given proper consideration to the other side of that coin. There may be some situations where you may be better off creating or keeping development capabilities in house. So I’m going to go over some of these considerations here. At the same time, I’ll try to inject a few ideas for how to mitigate them where or if possible.

So. What might these issues be? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Product Management, Tech / Business / General

Why Do Customers Switch? How to keep from being just a Satisficer?

April 2, 2021 By Scott

Do your customers really love you or your products and services? Maybe they do. Then again, maybe you’re just a necessarily evil. In this case, they feel more like a hostage than a customer and will bail out the moment they get the opportunity. So which is it? Are your customers experiencing loyalty to you? Or just Learned Helplessness? Do you have a bright future delighting or at least satisfying your customers? Or are you just a sunk cost fallacy waiting to be realized? (I’ll explain the sunk cost issue in a moment or two.)

During the evolution of COVID-19, a lot of marketplace issues have emerged. All manner of experts from varying business categories will be studying the effects for years. But from the perspective of this topic of product switching, we’re continuing though a period when consumers are choosing to, (or have been forced to), re-evaluate product and service choices. This has sometimes been due to simple availability, but potentially also affordability. People have also had several changing or new needs. Some will be temporary, others more permanent; from home office setup, through childcare, and the list goes on and on. All this change has has dumped a variety of seemingly stable brands in a big blender where all of a sudden, they’re up for review. And if you don’t have a customer retention strategy, even if you’re company can survive a brand switch here or there, you’re likely going to leave a lot of money on the table. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Marketing, Product Management

How to Work with Software Development Companies – Part 2

January 17, 2020 By Scott

In Part 1 of How to Work with Software Development Companies, we covered the beginning of the engagement process though the proposal and negotiation phase. In Part 2, we’ll get more into estimates, SOWs and MSAs, and dealing with change orders followed by project delivery.

Project Estimate Efforts – Time & Money

Project PlanningOne way or another, when your only real costs are personnel, the adage time is money certainly applies. As does the Theory of Constraints. There’s a number of variations on this theme, but basically it’s along these lines: For any project, you have time, money and features. (Some add quality.) You can pick any two. In other words, you can spend more to buy less time, (though not always), or you can cut features for time, etc. etc. There are some that claim in the Age of Agile or for other reasons that this isn’t as true as it once was. They’re wrong. Common Sense doesn’t always hold up under careful scrutiny, but in this case, it does.

So what’s the point? The point is when we’re done with all the back and forth discussion, an estimate will be based on anticipated time to do something and the costs. So you will likely face potentially wide ranges of estimates depending on how easy/hard it is to estimate the tasks at hand. And software development is notoriously challenging to estimate. Discussions as to why are out of scope of this article, but suffice it to say, it’s a challenge. You will most likely get an early rough estimate. But for any project with deep complexity, chances are good some form of deep discovery will be required to get rational estimates. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Product Management, Tech / Business / General

How to Work with Software Development Companies – Part 1

January 17, 2020 By Scott

If you’ve been doing outsourcing for awhile, this article may not be for you. But if you’re new to it or feel like you may be missing something, maybe there’s some useful ideas in here for you. When working with any contract service, whether it’s a physical re-model of your corporate lobby or a multi-million dollar system that will change the world, many of the same considerations apply.

In this first part of How to Work with Software Development Companies, we’ll look at the beginning of the engagement process though the proposal and negotiation phase. In Part 2, we’ll get more into estimates, SOWs and MSAs, and dealing with change orders followed by project delivery. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Product Management, Tech / Business / General

When to Work with Software Development Companies

January 7, 2020 By Scott

Outsource - In HouseEvery single thing you do as a senior leader at your company is generally about delivering value. What this means will of course vary based on your firm and its many stakeholders. But one thing in our present state of affairs is clear enough: In just about any firm bigger than a corner lemonade stand, software is likely going to play a non-trivial role anywhere from being part of a strategically core competitive product, to playing a key role in business processes.

Depending on whose numbers you believe accurate, there’s about 20-23 million software developers in the world as of 2018. In the U.S., maybe 3.5-4.5 million. Discrepancies can easily be attributed to how you count. For example, are QA Engineers software developers? Is a mathematician who works on algorithms, but doesn’t commit code a software engineer? There’s some slop in the numbers. Whatever. Regardless of how you count talented software developers, right now there don’t seem to be enough. (Unless you happen to be pounding code yourself and enjoying having the hot career ticket!) Yes, thousands are in the midst of Python Boot Camps and “Yes, You Too Can Be a Data Scientist”  courses. Still, the bottom line for you as a senior manager is for your current emergency project or other ongoing needs, you don’t have the development resources on staff that you need. And depending on where you are, budget, and all the usual reasons, you may struggle to build internal teams in the currently challenging hiring environment for talent. If you’ve been doing outsourcing for awhile, this article may not be for you. But if you’re new to it or feel like you may be missing something, maybe there’s some useful ideas in here for you. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Product Management, Tech / Business / General

Innovator’s Dilemma – Why Can’t Large Firms Get Past It?

October 11, 2019 By Scott

Oh no. Not another article on someone’s idea about how to do corporate innovation. Yes. Sorry. Here it comes.

TL;DR version: Form a group. Make sure they’re actually entrepreneurs or have true entrepreneur mindset. Give them their own P&L. And get them away from the mothership. Is this always the best way? No. Of course not. But it’s something to consider. And here’s the long winded version as to why…

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Product Management, Tech / Business / General

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