The Art of "Discovering" Product Features - presented at AgileDC 2017-Oct

www.agilious.com @agilious 1© 2016 Inquiry Institute & Marilee Adams
October 16, 2017
PRESENTED BY
MANJIT SINGH
The Art of "Discovering" Product
Features

2
20 years of software
development, management
& delivery experience
Consulted, trained, or
coached teams at IBM, SRA,
UMUC, NSF, DOJ, DOL, NSF
16+ yrs of agile experience;
starting with XP in
2000 at IBM
MS Computer Science
at SUNY Albany
Founder & organizer
DC Agile User Group
Enterprise Agile
Transformation Coach &
CST
Manjit
manjit@agilious.com | @supermanjit | LinkedIn.com/in/SinghManjit
#DiscoveringProductFeatures
Founder & President
Agilious

Why Every Business Needs Product Discovery
Illustration by Kevin Cornell

Rise of Usable, Useless Products
Acceptable levels of both
1. utility – “whether it provides the features you
need”
2. usability – “how easy & pleasant these
features are to use”

Major Problem
Lack of product/market fit.
Marc Andreessen has noted: “The quality of a startup’s product can
be defined as how impressive the product is to one customer or user
who actually uses it: How easy is the product to use? How feature rich
is it? How fast is it? How extensible is it? How polished is it? How
many (or rather, how few) bugs does it have? The size of a startup’s
market is the the number, and growth rate, of those customers or
users for that product…
The only thing that matters is getting to
product/market fit. Product/market fit means being in a
good market with a product that can satisfy that market.”

Product/Market Fit
Startups and companies don’t spend enough time to
increase the likelihood of good product/market fit
before they start design and development.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Lean Startup concept
• Assess viability upfront
• Thinking about metrics, revenue & market sizes
is certainly useful, but…
shouldn’t we rather focus on
Minimum Desirable Products?

Minimum Desirable Product (MDP)
A desirability-focused team focuses first &
foremost on:
• the target customer
• their context, and
• behavior
And build a product experience around these.

MVP vs MDP
A Minimum Viable Product tends to center around
the business perspective – what’s the minimum product I
have to build in order to figure out whether or not I have a
business?
A Minimum Desirable Product (MDP) would focus
primarily on whether or not you are providing an insanely
great product experience and creating value for the end
user.

Why Products Fail to Fit?
Designer Myopia – Designing for industry, not
people!
– becoming blind to the needs of users
– designing solutions too early

Is There A Better Way?
Product Discovery – a process that helps us
understand the problem properly so we don’t just
design things better, but design better things.
Becoming blind to the needs of users.

Product Discovery
Consists of three steps:
• Step 1. Frame the problem and maximize the
opportunity
• Step 2. Explore and assess multiple solutions
• Step 3. Prioritize and plan

Frame the Problem
It’s hard to argue with Einstein:
If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d
spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem
and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.

Frame the Problem
Discuss and answer questions such as:
• For whom are we solving this problem?
• Which user needs are we trying to address?
• For existing products, what are the shortcomings we need to fix?
• What customer insights do we have available to inform the solution
(customer support, analytics, market research, user research,
competitive analysis, etc.)?

Tools
• Customer Journey Maps
• Fishbone Diagrams
• 5 Whys

What Is A Customer Journey Map?
https://experiencematters.blog/2013/04/03/seven-steps-for-developing-customer-journey-maps/
Journey modeling is the process of illustrating a
complete story centered on the relationship that
unfolds over time between an individual and a
system, service, product, brand, or organization.

Customer Journey Map
Build an understanding of connectedness and
causality, observing when various forces
intersect and alter a person’s emotions, opinions,
and actions.

Gain Insights
SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dsarh1BhC9U

Sample – Patient Journey Map
https://www.gov.im/categories/health-and-wellbeing/accident-and-emergency-at-nobles-hospital/

Sample – Commuter Journey Map

Visions
Aligning Goals & Constraints

Crafting a Vision Statement
For Target Customers
Who Statement of Need
The Product Name
Is a Category
That Compelling Reason to Buy & Use
Unlike Competition / Alternative
Our Product Differentiator
As described by Geoffrey Moore in Crossing the Chasm
(Thanks to Gabrielle Benefield for the reference)

Sample Vision Statement
For business email users
Who want to better manage the increasing number of
messages while they are out of the office,
The BlackBerry
Is an mobile email solution
That provides a real-time link to their desktop email for
sending, reading and responding to important messages
Unlike other mobile email solutions, BlackBerry is
wearable, secure, and always connected.

Practice Time
Mobile App for Neighbors to “Share”
Tools/Equipment
A company has asked your firm to develop a
mobile app to enable residents of a community to
”share” tools and equipment (example: lawn
mower, snow blower, power saw, etc.).

Exercise
Create a Journey Map
• For the tool owner
or
• For the tool borrower

Show Off Your Journey Map

Next Steps
Write down one thing you are taking away?

Resources
• How To Run a Journey Mapping Workshop
https://boagworld.com/usability/how-to-run-a-
customer-journey-mapping-workshop/
• Mapping Tools
http://patternservicedesign.com/experience-mapping-
tools/
• Journey Map templates
https://uxpressia.com/templates

Accelerating Agility
10311 Motor City Drive, Suite 750, Bethesda, MD 20817
www.agilious.com
manjit@agilious.com
240.244.3311
www.facebook.com/agilious
@agilious
ADDRESS:
WEBSITE:
EMAIL:
TELEPHONE:
Thank You!
Agilious is dedicated to helping organizations achieve
the highest levels of business agility through the
pragmatic application of Agile and Lean methods
across their entire enterprise.

The Art of "Discovering" Product Features - presented at AgileDC 2017-Oct

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