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Problem Statement - The Elicitation Technique for Internal Business Requirements

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The Problem Unlike Product Requirements that are very straightforward (like a new User Story or an enhancement to an existing one), from time to time we get ambiguous and partial business requirements internally (i.e. not customer or partners) that are typically buried in solutions - “We need to be compliant with GDPR regulation”, “There is a vendor who is willing to offer services at a lower price point”, “We need to start this internal team blog and being transparent about what we do ” Which on analysis boils down to: “We need to focus on Compliance as we are majorly exposed to the risk of a Regulatory Audit”, “We should focus on cost savings as we are running low on funding”, “We need to reduce tension and conflict with other teams”. Source These sort of one liners will often come from a senior role like a Director, VP or SVP, and as the Product Manager deciding or recommending items for Roadmap there is a slight apprehension coz it’s….well a senior role and they’ve probably thoug...
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Building my first roadmap

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Intro For years I was simply spectacle to numerous roadmaps - both revealed (on paper) and unrevealed (in the head) that Product and Program Managers created. My job was always to contribute opinion and any insights, and sometimes I did influence the roadmap provided my arguments were strong. However, I never had an opportunity to build one myself from scratch. The first chance occurred in my most recent engagement as a Product Owner to build a roadmap for a SaaS product implementation in an enterprise for an important use case, and here are my thoughts Lessons (in the order of importance) A. Focusing on tackling assumptions first rather than building features  This might sound cliche but whenever there is a development team on standby hungry to build and deploy there is a never ending temptation to do the 'real' work i.e. coding. Once we give into this temptation to build a roadmap full of 'features' it automatically influences prioritization by focusing on knowns i.e...
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Conceptual Modeling using MindManager

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Domain Knowledge In business analysis, domain knowledge - Technology, Stakeholders & Processes is a key to success. It consists of the jargon, people, processes and any other related pieces of supplementary information that are interconnected. In case of cross-enterprise initiatives, which involve multiple lines of business or products, domain knowledge can be a bit challenging. Applying the concept of cross-enterprise to application support or enhancement, acquiring and updating domain knowledge can get ‘real’ challenging. Consider moving to a new organization and supporting a cross-enterprise application - Not only does one need to get up to speed and learn but also keep track of all the changes that are happening simultaneously. This is no ordinary task. Let me explain. In one of my recent engagements as part of the enterprise cross-functional team I was involved in the ecommerce platform support (Bugs, Updates) and enhancement (New Features and Improvements). The platform was c...
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New Product MVP Development approaches

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    Introduction Building MVPs or Prototypes is nothing new. On the surface it looks simple - Create a hypothesis or a List of assumptions, Find the most critical assumptions, Build a prototype or experiment to validate these assumptions - rinse and repeat until you achieve the objectives - Risk Reduction or Feasibility Study. However, depending on the type of Project / Product, Organization and End-Users / Stakeholders the New Product MVP approach varies in two aspects: Product-Centric vs User-Centric [1]. Product-Centric Approach For teams that do not have UX Researchers or Product Managers that can conduct user research or the market isn’t conducive for such exploration Product-centric is the way to go. Focus is to build a product assuming capabilities / features on platform(s) that might appeal to the market based on understanding or expectations of possible users. Once completed the Product is marketed to the widest possible audience in the hopes that users adopting ...
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Highlights from my Product Management Course from Stanford University Continuing Studies

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Intro I recently finished the Fundamentals of Product Management Course from Stanford University's Continuing Studies for Winter 2020. The 10-week course is fully online but what distinguishes it from other platforms (Udemy, Coursera) is the emphasis on forming a team and collaborating right from the start. This experience taught me once again about the importance of team dynamics, managing personalities, leveraging strengths, in addition to product knowledge. The highlight of the course was conducting user interviews for potential users of our product. I believe I learnt quite a bit from this course and hence sharing my learning below: Category-Defining Products Having spent a majority of my career building multiple products that never reached market-fit (i.e. failed) I have to specially thank the course instructor for putting those failed product souls to finally rest in their graves. I thought we were aiming for the moon: Now I realize, we were aiming at empty space (No market...
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Location: Canada
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Importance of User Research for Early Stage B2C Product Success

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Image Source -  Participate in Focus Groups | SIS International Research Intro The topic of User Experience Research in the realm of User Experience Design has captured a lot of attention recently. User Experience Research or User Research focuses on understanding a user or customer view of using a service/product or a experiencing a situation in order to better design/craft compelling experiences for them. It is systematically organizing and obtaining feedback through a variety of methods from actual users of the Product besides alpha and beta testers. However, the same can also be used to explore opportunities or understand problems better. In fact, having an effective, well-managed and systematic User Research can prove to be critical to the success of a Product irrespective of its stage. Toyota, the automotive giant, send its research team physically to market locations to conduct field studies, observe consumers in real life, using their products or competitor products, a...
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Role of Agile in Building New Products in Companies

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 The need for Agility while building new products cannot be overstated. Positioning the product with laser focus for a specific segment with the right business model goes hand-in-hand with the flexibility to change direction or pivot when needed. However, agility goes far more deeper than just product focus. In order to fully understand the customer, question our assumptions, define and target the ever shifting and evolving market needs, product teams have to be truly agile as well. Before we understand why Agile is important we have to understand why the traditional control & command structure put companies at a disadvantage for creating disruptive technology products or Business Models Let us look at some characteristics of a company. What is company? A product or service that has reached market-fit and is well in growth stage. This means that it has a steady stream of customers or clients. In order to continuously serve and achieve quality there are predefined proces...
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