A product spec is a blueprint that describes what you’re building, who you’re building it for and what the final outcome should be.

A well-written spec is about clarity. The more information you have going into a product spec, the more clarity you give everyone working on the product with you.

We generally include some or all of the following, depending on what is needed to clearly communicate what is needed.

A product spec includes:

• Summary – what is the idea being suggested?
• A business case – what value does this create for the business and/or customer?
• User stories – what is the user trying to accomplish? (we have a quick template here)
• User personas – who is the solution for?
• Designs – what does the solution look like?
• Functional specs – what are the technical details behind the solution?  (Joel Spolsky has written extensively about this.)

If you’re working in a bigger company or large teams, you should err on the side of over-communication: more context and more deeply detailed specs. As a rule of thumb, the more moving parts that are involved, the less you want to leave up to interpretation.

On the other hand, if you’re working closely with a small team, you might be able to get by with simpler, lightweight specs.

Our 5-Step Process For Writing Product Specs

For much of its life, a product spec is a work in progress. That’s fine! That’s how it should be. You’ll be getting new information and dealing with potential setbacks  throughout the process.

We follow a process here at ProdPad that mirrors something Einstein once said: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

Thinking through the problem that you intend to solve – and sometimes even going back to the drawing board entirely – is not a waste of time. The problem is usually the hardest thing to nail.

So expect that you’ll probably be making a series of changes to make along the way – but also that you’ll end up with a more solid product spec for it.

Writing specs is not a straight shot – but here’s the process that works for us.

Step 1: Turn to customer feedback and data to find the source of the problems

The best place to go looking for problems is in your customer feedback.

Customer feedback comes in many forms: complaints, questions, product suggestions and  feature requests. The most critical thing when evaluating all this is to not take it literally.

What your customers are asking for is not a mandate. When you’re investigating a problem area,  each item of feedback is a data point to help you get down to the root of the problem.

Speaking of data, customer feedback won’t always tell you if something critical like the checkout flow isn’t working. You’ll often need to look at the data!

What’s behind all this feedback in the first place?  What is the underlying issue here? These are the kind of critical questions that help you understand  a) the problem and b) the scope.

Other questions to ask here:

• Are a lot of customers asking for this? How big is customer desire?
• How critical is this problem? Is this going to make it hard for you to win over future customers?
• Is it keeping you from acquiring more users or closing deals?

Step 2: Break the problem down into a bunch of hypotheses

So how big is this problem, actually? In this step, you’ll continue to understand the scope of what you’re dealing with.

Let’s say for example, your customer feedback tells you that you have a big problem on your hands. There’s no quick fix for this one. You need to completely redo your checkout process.

Now you’re probably considering all kinds of ideas and that can quickly start to get overwhelming. What we suggest is that you break these ideas out into three categories:

This way you can still account for the full scope of the problem, but keep your eyes on the ball. Think MVP. The essentials are your top priority. Everything else is going to have to wait its turn.

Step 3: Open up product discussions across your team/company

“Writing a spec is a great way to nail down all those irritating design decisions, large and small, that get covered up if you don’t have a spec. Even small decisions can get nailed down with a spec,” says Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software.

Oof, yes. That sounds familiar. However, those small decisions tend to add up – and it’s in no one’s best interests to start dealing with them when it’s already sitting in your dev backlog.

The mistake I’ve seen made over and over is leaving these discussions until the end when a spec is already in production. You must create a space and a forum for your internal stakeholders to contribute while the idea is still taking shape.

Start inviting colleagues around the company now to help you start getting your idea ready. They know things you don’t and they can tell you from their corner:

1. What works
2. What doesn’t work
3. Argue for a bigger/smaller scope

The opportunity to open up product discussions around what gets done and how is a key trait of effective product teams.

We keep all our product discussions in ProdPad. Each product idea has a discussion section, so we’re able to focus on really specific objections and concerns.

Step 4: Do user testing with your closest customers

Everything you’ve done so far makes sense on paper, but reality bites. Things change when you put a prototype in front of humans! It’s time to see whether your assumptions hold and your customers react the way you’ve imagined they will.

At ProdPad, our designer preps  a series of simple designs – really simple, like wireframes and clickable prototypes – for user testing.

We do our user testing in two ways usually:

1. Slack customer community – We throw designs into our customer community and invite feedback. It’s a public channel, but it’s also where our closest and most engaged customers hang out. We get a lot of insights from the discussions that follow.
2. One-on-one user tests – We set up a dedicated session where we ask our user tester to perform a series of tasks to see how/where they trip up

Can users complete the tasks you ask them to? Are they easily able to find buttons? Do they feel confident about where to look for stuff?

What usually follows is that some of your assumptions were wrong. It’s not as easy to find the buttons, or the flow isn’t as obvious to the user as you thought it was.

There’s a couple other surprises you may find out here:

• edge cases
• surprise requirements
• misunderstood functionality
• widened or changed scope

At this point, we’re also looking at the bigger picture. We also look at how the new solution fits in with the way our users already use the product. What’s the difference between changing nothing and putting something new in place?

But it’s just a prototype and all you have to do is adjust it. Repeat until you’re confident you’ve gotten it right.

So think of it this way: User testing is all about minimizing risks. It’s cheaper to repeat this step than go live with a new feature that could blow up in everyone’s faces.

Step 5: If it’s ready, send to development

Remember how I mentioned earlier that product specs are always a work in progress? That’s the case even now, here in this final step.

The, even if development goes flawlessly, QA is a diff story.  Once you start clicking around, you might start to discover little things that you may have missed. It’s okay not to be harsh on yourself – it happens even to us.

We think everything is great and pat ourselves on the back for being so meticulous. But when we’re testing, we think, “Hmm, maybe this button should be on the right because it doesn’t actually make sense in the context of the rest of the app.”

It happens to the best of us. Perfection takes time.

When you feel confident you’ve got something going, add the final touches: final prototypes, technical information, key context, etc.

If you’ve been developing your product spec in ProdPad, now you can simply push to Trello, JIRA or your development tool of choice.

All done! Now take a well-deserved break and when you’re back, go right back to where you started from: customer feedback. The life of a product manager, eh? 

The post How to Write Great Product Specs appeared first on ProdPad.

Brainstorming from a Team

When developing a product (or bringing new ideas to an existing product), working with a creative team can be challenging if you don’t have close connections. Many of you may be too busy with other things to sit down in person and work out ideas together on a daily basis. While email can certainly help, you’re still lacking without having more sophisticated ways to share ideas using visuals and other organizational tools.

Here at ProdPad, we not only allow you to get ideas written down in a more organized way, but we also allow better team collaborations. Thanks to email integration and using discussion tools, you can collaborate with numerous people at once where ideas are easily stored and kept safe. Images of those ideas, such as wireframes, mockups, or just snaps of your whiteboard or notebook, can also be uploaded so you’ll have a multimedia center fitting all the chaotic pieces together.

When it comes to collaborations, feedback is the only way you’ll be able to fit an influx of various ideas together into something cohesive. Our tools help that immensely, along with immediate access to information stored there from other users to avoid confusion. You can even get a daily (or weekly) digest emailed to you to keep you up on what’s happening with particular discussions if you haven’t logged in for a while.

Capturing Ideas Before They Disappear

As noted above, the best ideas can ultimately be fleeting. You need something that can preserve them in a way that’s comprehensible for your personal reference or for your team’s perusal. We offer you the ability to instantly email an idea directly into our software so it doesn’t get lost or forgotten when you’re on the go. It’ll stay safe there until you have the time to focus on it. In the meantime, your collaborators can look at it and give you immediate feedback once you return.

Plus, when you’re browsing the Internet while on the go and happen to get one of those eureka moments, you don’t even have to sign in to our software to get it in writing. With the Google Chrome extension, you can instantly get the idea written down as part of your product backlog.

It’s time you stopped those bad habits of forgetting good ideas that could have turned into a world-changing business innovation. Contact us here at ProdPad to learn more about our software and the myriad organizational features you’ll be able to enjoy. We’ll help you turn the chaos of multiple ideas into something that forms a very clear picture.

Don’t have a ProdPad account yet? Just sign up for a free trial and try it for yourself today!

The post Good Ideas are Fleeting and Need Organization appeared first on ProdPad.

Filter your backlog for maximum control

Several different filters can be applied to your product backlog to help you get the most of ProdPad’s idea management features.

• Tags – These are your standard, customizable tags
• Products – Associate each idea to one or many products
• Whether it’s on a roadmap yet or not – Find out what’s planned
• User Personas – Associate ideas to various user segments
• Idea Creator – The person who actually logged the idea
• Idea Owner – The person in charge of taking the idea forward
• Idea Author – The bright person who came up with the idea!
• Status of the idea – Whether it’s in development, done, or anything in between
• Active vs. Archived – You can even dig though the ideas you’ve archived

You can refine your bank of ideas against even as specific criteria as you need by using multiple tags or combining any of these filters. And as always, these filters will work in conjunction with ProdPad’s powerful search. Plus, this razor sharp focus on a particular set of ideas can be applied throughout ProdPad. Your filters remain selected when you want to visualize priority, edit in bulk, or export your ideas. Filters make your backlog more manageable, no matter what you’re doing.

Sort your backlog any way you like

As well as applying granular filters, you can also sort your backlog by a number of relevant factors to bring the ideas you’re looking for to the top of the list.

• Date created
• Effort – This is a quick gauge, out of 100, on how much effort (relatively speaking) it’ll take to pull off the idea
• Impact – Like the Effort field, this measures how much impact the idea will have (top tip: combine with tags to identify what areas of the business will be impacted and improved)
• Popularity – Find out which ideas are most popular (bright red!) versus the ones that are feeling neglected (faded to grey)
• Detail – A rough guide based on whether the idea has comments, a business case or user stories, tags, or other fleshed out parts of the spec.

As always, your feedback is hugely appreciated. If you have any other ideas for how to keep your backlog tidy in ProdPad, just give us a shout at hello@prodpad.com.

If you’re not already a ProdPad user, you can start your free trial today!

The post Supercharged Product Backlog Filters appeared first on ProdPad.

Startups: Don’t just sprint – build for long term value!

This message resonated through a number of talks, including an interview with Liam Casey, CEO of PCH International, and Gary Vaynerchuk‘s passionate keynote.  Whether it was phrased as “Focus on the mission, and the money will follow” (tweet this) or “Stop thinking about your own goals, start thinking about your user’s goals instead” (tweet this), the point was clear: too many products are not truly built with the user in mind.  And the ones that are, genuinely do well.

Most likely, every company you talk to at #websummit will say they are user-centric – but how many of them really are?

At ProdPad, we want to do our bit to help companies build better products by providing product management software that forces you to ask the right questions, prioritise the right features, and map out your product roadmap strategically.

You can only fix problems if they’re a REAL problem

Again, main man Liam Casey making the case for identifying the most crucial pain points.  If you have to explain to your potential customers what problem you’re solving, you’re doing it wrong.  Don’t get too excited about a potential problem – go out there and verify that it actually exists.

Whether you use ProdPad to develop user personas and manage your team’s ideas or not, make sure you have the right processes in place to focus your product development on the right issues.

Luckily, the very act of doing product management right will help you figure out if the problem is real or not – come talk to us, email hello@prodpad.com, or get in touch on Twitter via @prodpad to talk more about this!

Skateboarding and entrepreneurship actually have a lot in common

Tony Hawk at the #websummit sounds like an unlikely fit, right? Well, not so fast cowboys and -girls!  Turns out that skateboarding and entrepreneurship have a lot in common, such as:

1. See your mistakes as learning experiences, and keep. getting. up.
2. The best new moves are often the result of combining two existing tricks
3. With social media, getting feedback is instantaneous – whether it’s on a video of Tony doing a McTwist (that’s a trick, not a new McDonald’s dessert!) or a new product feature

Alright, friends – that’s it for the first day of #WebSummit. Tomorrow we’re looking forward to seeing Elon Musk, and obviously meeting y’all in the ALPHA area!

The post ProdPad flying the flag of good product management at #websummit appeared first on ProdPad.

We’ve made it simple to group your products into any number of product lines.

Not only does it make it easier to organize your product documentation in ProdPad, but it also allows you to view a high-level view of your roadmap for each distinct product line.

Product Portfolio Roadmaps

Even if your products don’t fit nicely into product lines, we now allow you to view your product portfolio as a whole.

As Steve Johnson describes in his article on Portfolio Roadmaps:

A portfolio roadmap has become the preferred way to show delivery plans over time. It’s not just a desired feature list by month; it’s bigger than that. It describes major blocks of work, not a laundry list of features.

The format of the portfolio roadmap follows the familiar “Current, Near Term, Future” lean product management format that you already use in ProdPad.

And like the regular ‘single product’ roadmaps on ProdPad, you can share the portfolio with your team, or simply use it as a snapshot to get up on the wall or drop into your Board slides at the end of the month.

If you’re managing multiple products, the portfolio management in ProdPad will help you keep a clear overview of what products you have and where they are going.

If you’re not already on ProdPad, you can start your free trial today!

As always, we love getting your feedback! Let us know how you manage your multiple products, and how we can help make you awesome at that using ProdPad. Get in touch at hello@prodpad.com any time.

The post Product Lines and Product Portfolio Roadmaps appeared first on ProdPad.

Peace of mind

From now on, you can type away happily, knowing your every last word is being caught and saved, whether you’re updating a new feature request, fleshing out your product strategy, or adding some flair to your product roadmap.

Simply put, you won’t lose your work again.

Quicker to edit

An extra bonus for you is that this also makes it faster and easier for you to work. You no longer need to click to get into ‘edit mode’ and the click to save your work. It’s all done in one smooth movement. Click what you want to edit, type away, and as you go, we’ll save every last bit. We’ll even helpfully tell you when everything’s being saved, so you’re never left unsure.

Full coverage

This is more than just one little autosave box we’re talking about. We’ve rolled out these helpful changes through our app, whether you’re triaging new ideas, updating your product canvas, adding user feedback, user personas, or your roadmap.

Check it out in the following pages:

• Ideas Management: Idea title, description, business case, user stories and user acceptance test criteria, functional specs and any additional notes
• Product Canvas: Product name, description, key KPIs, and product vision
• User Personas: Persona name, description, behaviors, goals, and frustrations/limitations
• User Feedback: Any feedback snippet from users
• Product Roadmap: Roadmap card titles and descriptions

If you’re not already on ProdPad, you can start your free trial today!

It’s the little things that make a product delightful to use, and this one is our latest to help you work smoothly and delightfully. We hope it helps! If you have other suggestions on how we can make ProdPad even better to use, get in touch any time at feedback@prodpad.com.

The post Autosave to the rescue! appeared first on ProdPad.

With ProdPad’s new Chrome extension, you can throw new ideas to your idea backlog, and you don’t even need to be logged in to use it.

Send ideas now, fill them out later

We designed the ProdPad Chrome extension to make it easy for you to log ideas quickly. There’s only two fields, and one of them is optional:

-New idea summary

-Title (optional)

You can head to your ProdPad account to add more details when you’re ready for that.

Pro tip: If you highlight a snippet on the page and then click the ProdPad extension icon, the snippet can be edited or saved right away.

Grab it from the Chrome Store

You can get the ProdPad extension from the Chrome Store. You’ll be prompted for your API key, which you can grab from under “Profile Settings.” (Here’s where you can find your API key.)

That’s it! You’re good to go!

If you have any suggestions on how we could make it better, get in touch at feedback@prodpad.com and let us know.

This is our first release to the Chrome store, and there’s certainly more to come. Let us know what you think!

The post Our New ProdPad Chrome Extension Is Here! appeared first on ProdPad.

Why these integrations?

Our goal is to make the lives of Product Managers and their teams easier. We know that our users are already using a variety of project management, development management, and task management tools. ProdPad helps teams decide which projects or development tasks need to be worked on next, so it was a natural progression to allow an idea in ProdPad to be pushed directly to a project management tool so development can take it from there.

Transparency in Development

While the immediate benefit of these integrations means that you no longer need to manually copy over a finished spec from ProdPad into JIRA, Trello, or Pivotal tracker, it does more than that.

Your development team will always work best if they know why they are building out a specific feature. They need to know what problem they are solving, and what impact it’ll have on the company.

Because ProdPad pushes through a record of the product spec as well as a link back to the original idea, your developers using JIRA, Pivotal Tracker or Trello will be able to track back a request to it’s core. Who requested it (was it the CEO or a client?) and what was their original intention?

This will help ensure your devs are building the right thing and know who to ask if the spec isn’t clear.

Transparency in Business

Your sales team is a great source of new ideas, and so is your marketing team, your support team and even your CEO. However, when they tell you a great new idea, they usually have no way of knowing where it ended up.

With a direct integration set up, they can see whether it landed in Trello, JIRA, or Pivotal Tracker to be worked on by the development team, or whether it’s still sitting in ProdPad waiting for a little more feedback.

Keep your team in the loop from end-to-end by integrating ProdPad with your development tool.

What are you waiting for? Start your free trial today!

API and more integrations

While JIRA, Trello and Pivotal Tracker are our first direct integrations, we’re on the lookout for new integration ideas. Our API is being built out for developer access, and we’re open to suggestions on what else you’d love to see ProdPad integrated with.

Get in touch at hello@prodpad.com if you’ve got a particular integration in mind.

Using a different tool?

If JIRA, Pivotal Tracker and Trello aren’t your bag, don’t worry! We might already have you covered with our Zapier integration! Have a look at their full list of integrations available, now up to more than 240 3rd-party services you probably already use.

The post Integrate with JIRA, Trello, and Pivotal Tracker appeared first on ProdPad.