Learn how the “canvas” approach can help you quickly evaluate product opportunities to ensure you are solving problems and creating true value for both your organization and your target audience. This will interactive workshop that will teach you how to create your own opportunity canvas.
12. Assessing Product Opportunities
1. Exactly what problem will this solve? (value proposition)
2. For whom do we solve that problem? (target market)
3. How big is the opportunity? (market size)
4. What alternatives are out there? (competitive landscape)
5. Why are we best suited to pursue this? (our differentiator)
6. Why now? (market window)
7. How will we get this product to market? (GTM strategy)
8. How will we measure success/make money (metrics/revenue
strategy)
9. What factors are critical to success? (solution requirements)
10. Given above, what’s the recommendation? (go or no-go)
This presentation was encouraged by Jeff Patton’s Product Discovery workshop.
In a nut shell, his approach is focused on helping us
Stop wasting time and energy developing features that
no one wants
no one will actually use
(even though they may lie and tell us so)
Not much time, this is basically just an invitation to learn more
@Aaron’s a huge Jeff Patton fan boy, great info and wants us to share!
Roughly follows creative commons’ attribution model
lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the creator’s work, even commercially, as long as proper credit given for the original creation.
Our goal is to help you learn one method to determine your product opportunity
We all know there are always too many features than there is time
assuming you have a real product (insert “high five” phone app joke here)
The key is using discovery to size up opportunities and determine which to pursue. The Opportunity Canvas is one tool to help you do just that.
One that helps us focus in on:
target users with actual problems to solve (that we can solve)
how these users manage today
value we can provide and how to measure our success
how we’re delivering actual impact and outcome to our businesses
ensuring we don’t lose sight of costs (and ROI)
(@ DAN) At Return Path, Product Managers are required to have and maintain a canvas for all of our major projects. If we struggle to complete that usually means we haven’t done enough research or discovery.
How many people have read Running Lean or are somewhat familiar with the lean canvas?
How many people use it at work?
The Lean Canvas was adapted from the traditional business model canvas which was created in 2008 by Alexander Osterwalder.
Unlike the traditional business model, this new canvas was geared toward startups.
In Running Lean, Ash Maurya added new elements such as Unfair Advantage, Problem, and Solution. The result was a model that met the needs of a startup community looking for quick ways to gauge whether their business was viable.
The Lean Canvas is divided into a Product side on the left and a Market side on the right. The sections are intended to be completed in a specific order:
Problem (product)
Customer Segments (market)
Unique Value Proposition (both product and market)
Solution (product)
Channels (market)
Cost Structure (product)
Revenue Streams (market)
Key Metrics (product)
Unfair Advantage (market)
The canvas is especially helpful when starting a new business, or creating an entirely new product line.
As a startup you have many different risks and challenges:
Validating your value proposition and figuring out how to make money
How you plan to get the product to customers and sell to them
How much it will cost to produce this product?
What will you measure to track your progress?
As well as determining if there is a market to sustain the business.
The beauty of the canvas that it’s a lightweight tool to identifies risks early and encourages you to tackle them up front
The template was developed by Marty Cagan
In the case of an existing product, the majority of the Lean Canvas is irrelevant.
You already have a distribution model.
You already have a monetization strategy.
There is already a defined cost structure.
At that point you’re simply simply trying to create more value in your solution.
Therefore purpose of the assessment is either to:
Prevent companies from wasting time and money on a poor opportunity
Or, for those that are good opportunities, to understand better what will be required to succeed
Cagan recommends consideration of all ten questions prior to beginning product discovery.
If you sufficiently answer each question you should be able to recommend whether there’s enough potential value to move forward (validation phase).
The key questions in an opportunity assessment are:
What problem are you trying to solve?
Who exactly are you solving this problem for?
How will you measure success?
Product teams should perform opportunity assessments on an ongoing basis.
They should also maintain a prioritized list of assessment called the Opportunity Backlog.
During Product Discovery, we look for product solutions to these opportunities. When we succeed, the work is gets added to the Product Backlog.
While Cagan’s assessment template is a great list of questions, it isn’t as easy to use or visually helpful as the lean canvas.
Which is why Jeff Patton create the Opportunity Canvas
By mixing the Lean Canvas and the Opportunity Assessment, Patton gives us a compelling way to determine whether or not we should build new features.
Unlike the Lean Canvas, which is primarily for lean startups, the Opportunity Canvas is focused on adding value to an existing offering
Just like the Lean Canvas, the Opportunity Canvas has nine sections. However, they are named and ordered differently.
Collaborative group exercise - minimum “triad” (but perhaps key int. stakeholders)
Using for all opportunities will help compare all in similar context
The benefits of the canvas approach include:
Visualizing an opportunity, and its risks, in a single view...Seriously, Post It!
Seeing the relationships between the risk and potential.
Groups build a shared understanding by working collaboratively
Creates a canvas that leverages everyone’s contribution
More concisely: The “canvas” approach is an effective way for all groups to quickly grasp key project goals, projected user impact and business outcome
Interchangeble as Jeff is pragmatic as customers, sales, execs, etc often help us with the solution before we fully define the problem...or maybe that’s just me?
Solution Ideas
List the product, feature, or enhancement ideas that solve problems for your target audience. (revisit after problem definition! standard:need vs. want)
Problems
Ideally we start with a clear problem we’re trying to solve.
Understand the term “problem” is relative. If you’re building a video game, users may not have a real “problem” to solve, just a desire to be entertained
Users & Customers
What customers have the challenges that are addressed by your solution?
Create specific personas and build empathy for the users and the problem they face...DO NOT OVER THINK THESE!!!
Segment customers/users based on how their goals are met (or not)
Be deliberate about who you’re targeting with your product.
Don’t try to build one solution for everyone at once...be agile...iterate
Solutions Today
How do users address their problems today? (even if not with software)
Competitive products? Current work arounds?
User Value
How will your offering help them do things differently than their current solution?
What will be the key benefit(s)?
User Metrics
getting better but has been biggest error....we don’t start with success metrics in mind
How is success determined? Actual adoption, usage, and value gained by your solution?
These are your KPIs - Key Performance Indicators.
Identify them early, capture the metrics, publish them...even if they don’t meet expectations
remember, it’s about learning and failing fast.
Adoption Strategy
How will customers and users discover and adopt your solution?
Differs for Alpha/Beta/EAP than GA...focus on actual Go To Market
Business Problems (
Helping the bottom line?
What business problem are you solving for your company?
Business Metrics
What business performance metrics will be affected by the success of this solution?
Not redundant - these are the company level metrics that will see impact
Increased in-product upsell, lower support costs, reduced churn rate
Budget
Oh yeah…”Last But Not Least?!?”
Seriously, fully paint the potential value before getting sucked down into Dante’s 8th hell of cost estimation…..
It is important to determine a rough ROI
Dollaz and/or development necessary to discover, build, and refine this solution
Doing all this = success, right? Yeah, there’s obviously more
Team sport so you’ll have too much “opportunity”
Focus on specific *achievable* challenges and (re)learn “POC”
it’s about experimentation (and USER validation)
v.01 vs. v1.0
Most important:
Outcome over Output
“achievement over activity” 12 yo Fast Co. quote of then Yahoo CTO
Small moves, directly measuring with users, adjusting and delivering = $$$
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